Inevitably, at some point before the July 15 deadline, the Giants and Saquon Barkley will come to some kind of agreement on a contract or a tender. Barkley is more valuable to the Giants’ brand than the average running back, and the Giants’ desire to be the kind of place that keeps likable, highly drafted folks around for as long as possible is also above average.
On Barkley’s end, being a working running back with an above-average paycheck is better than being a Le’Veon Bell–like curiosity—someone who ultimately never recovered from an optics standpoint for sitting out an entire season in protest of the draconian franchise tag rules. Bell also got incredibly lucky from a financial standpoint, given his disadvantageous position, finding a desperate Jets club intent on bidding against itself. Barkley would have no such suitor.
As a football-viewing public going for this familiar ride, it’s a bit tiresome to watch the performance again. It’s formulaic, like a horror movie in which we are sure the protagonists will venture into the dangerous, dimly lit attic against all laws of common sense before somehow finding their way out. Someone from the team side leaks a “generous” offer that was turned down to embarrass the player or paint him as greedy. The player publicly stands his ground and pretends there is somewhere else he’d rather be, like moving his family and setting up a new life infrastructure is something he’d do for fun. Then, as the deadline approaches, we magically forget about the animosity of the previous months and all is well when the 11th-hour pact is reached. Unless it isn’t.
