Unfortunately for NY Giants running back Saquon Barkley, his offseason has been filled with experts and analysts ripping him to shreds. Despite Barkley impressing during OTAs and minicamp, and sporting a shredded look that countless teammates of his wish they had, people aren’t buying into the Saquon hype.
Go ahead and just pencil this in as motivation for Barkley, who is entering the final year of his contract with the G-Men. While it’s been tough to limit things in this case, we take a look in this piece at the four worst hot takes that have surrounded the NY speedster.
4. Saquon Barkley doesn’t know how to play the position
This summer, ESPN spoke with coaches, players and execs to come away with the top 10 players at each position. For running back, Barkley received some honorable mention love, but one unnamed coach blasted Barkley, saying that he doesn’t know how to play running back and he’s a liability when it comes to blocking. That’s just brutal.
"“I’m down on him — he still doesn’t know how to play running back enough,” the coach told ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler. “He’s a bouncer. He wants every run to be a home run. He’s going to have to learn that 4-yard runs in this league are good, instead of stopping, cutting it back and losing 2. And he gets his ass kicked in protection.”"
That coach didn’t hold back, and Barkley 100 percent must have been furious when he was made aware of this article. Having said that, Barkley could care less about what some unknown coach has to say about him. Instead, the former No. 2 overall pick has been grinding this offseason to make sure he’s at his best for Week 1.
Barkley indeed has some tremendous pressure on him to deliver. He’s quite literally playing for his future, as he’ll need to impress this fall and winter to land himself a nice pay day next offseason. It’s up in the air if that will come from the Giants or not. Regardless, the coach was out of line to call out Barkley in this way.