Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley didn’t expect to be booed when he returned to MetLife Stadium on Sunday afternoon. He figured New York Giants fans were over his defection to their NFC East rivals during the offseason.
He was wrong.
Giants fans reigned boos down on Barkley the moment he stepped onto the field and that continued every time he touched the football until he had run every last one of them out of their seats.
In the end, Barkley took it as a bit of a compliment.
“It’s kind of hard not to hear that. I think I kind of, I didn’t help myself when I said earlier in the week, I didn’t think I was going to get booed, but they’re booing for a reason. It’s a compliment at the end of the day. That’s how I took it,” he told reporters after the game.
Barkley also found it “crazy” to see fans burning his jerseys as he entered from the parking lot. But none of that elicited the same kind of emotion out of Barkley that the fans booing Giants quarterback Daniel Jones did.
Although they were competitors on Sunday, Barkley and Jones are close friends away from the field. And seeing his buddy get hated on so strongly rubbed Barkley the wrong way.
“The boos for him suck, too,” Barkley said, via the New York Daily News. “Fans don’t get it. They give us a hard time. We know sometimes the games don’t go the way that we would like. But he works his ass off, and he’ll do anything for the organization to try to win a Super Bowl — and likewise when I was here.
“They’re a good team, and (sometimes) games aren’t going the way they want to go. And I know the fans are over it, and the fans are tired of the B.S. and the same old stuff. But it’s sad. Because there’s guys who don’t care in this league, and there’s guys who do care. And he’s one of those guys. So it sucks to see that.”
Jones was benched early in the fourth quarter and replaced by Drew Lock, who certainly didn’t raise the level of play on the field. After the game, head coach Brian Daboll committed to Jones as his starter but the clock is ticking. Jones’ time in East Rutherford is rapidly coming to an end and the fans refuse to show any love to him on his way out.
Barkley finds that disrespectful and maybe it is. But Giants fans are at a loss for how to express themselves at this point following a decade-plus of embarrassing futility.
