Eagles running back Saquon Barkley won’t be in the lineup against his former team on Sunday, but he remained on the Giants’ minds as they move toward the end of the season.
It has been easy to see how Barkley’s on-field production has been lacking from the Giants offense this season and his former teammates said that he might have been missed even more off the field. Quarterback Tommy DeVito said that he thinks the team understood what they’d be losing from a leadership standpoint, but “maybe just didn’t cherish it enough” when it came time to make a decision about re-signing him.
Safety Dane Belton noted Barkley’s influence on both sides of the ball and said the team is “super young” so “it can’t help to lose a great leader like that. Tight end Daniel Bellinger agreed with the other players about the void Barkley left behind.
“For me the biggest part of losing Saquon was the locker room aspect,” Bellinger said, via Jordan Raanan of ESPN.com. “Just having him as a leader and a guy that when there were times like, what do we do, he would be like ‘Go play!’ He brought an energy that sometimes we needed out there.”
The Giants’ decision to part with Barkley played out on their offseason appearance on Hard Knocks and Barkley’s massive season for a divisional rival has only added to the negative feelings about their 3-13 record. Nothing that happens in Week 18 will change that, but it could impact who is calling the shots for the Giants in the future.
