After all the talk this offseason, all the rhetoric that he wanted to show the Giants he was still the same guy they drafted No. 2 overall in 2018 and wanted to prove the haters wrong…well, Sunday, Saquon Barkley took a huge step towards just that.
With 18 carries for 164 yards, one touchdown, one huge two-point conversion, six catches for 30 yards, and a whole lot of explosiveness and hard-nosed play, Barkley definitely looked like the guy who had over 2,000 yards from scrimmage in 2018.
But, to him, it’s not just about Sunday – it’s about doing it 16 more times.
“It's just one game, to be honest. That's how I look at it. Obviously, at the end of the day, I'm excited to get the win. But personally, just got to keep coming in,” Barkley said. “Something that just keeps tickling me that Coach (Daboll) says is ‘just enjoy the process,' and that's something I've been battling in the last few years with rehabbing and injuries, so that's been my mindset.”
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All summer, Barkley has kept up that mindset, saying he comes to work every day “just to keep enjoying the process,” and staying on an even keel.
“No matter what, win, loss, tie, I just want to come here with the same mindset and just keep enjoying the process and come to work every single day,” he said. “We had a great week of practice and no matter what the result was going to be, we can't let that alter what happens this week. So we've got to keep grinding and keep leaning on each other.”
The best part of the process for Saquon wasn’t the points he scored, or the near-career-long run that set up a TD – it was how, in a situation where in the past they would’ve folded, Big Blue came out resilient and responded to a big halftime deficit.
“Being down 13-0 against a great team – Tennessee's been very successful in this league for a very long time, and have a whole bunch of great players over there, but no one came in and hit the panic button,” Barkley said. “We came here and we said, 'We have 30 minutes. It's going to be a dogfight.' We got that momentum, and there’s something special when you feed off each other. Special teams made plays. Defense made plays. We've made plays.
All three phases made plays. That's important.”
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Of course, the 68-yard run in the second half certainly helped.
“That’s when I kind of started to get into the zone, started locking in. I kind of love being in that place, but I've got to try to find a way to get in that place a little bit more and a little quicker,” he said. “It's a lot easier to rip off those runs when you've got the boys pulling and a set an edge and opening up the gap and getting me one-on-one with a corner. We had a heck of a game, but definitely we give shouts to the line. They play tremendously.”
Props the line gave right back to Barkley.
“When we run the ball and we are explosive it is definitely a good feeling. We've got a good stable of running backs and if we open up the lanes they can be successful,” said left tackle Andrew Thomas.
Added right tackle Evan Neal: “I was like man that’s a damn good back there, I want to do everything I can to open holes for him so he doesn’t have to do it all himself.”
Barkley definitely outpaced his counterpart, multiple-time Pro Bowler Derrick Henry, although he knows he’s not competing against the other team’s backs per se so there’s not much to look into about that kind of matchup feeding into his thinking.
Nor, he said, does all of the things he said this summer – more, really, that he’s now two years removed from his torn ACL, so he knows his body is ready to rock.
“It’s not an arrogant mindset, it’s more confidence; you hear people say the first year is tough (after a torn ACL) and the second year is even better, but I’m not listening to all that,” he said. “Especially when you see a guy like Adrian Peterson come back and blow up after his ACL…the mindset is that ‘I want to be different.’ I’m human, but at the end of the day, I learned a lot from the previous year.”
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And that learning allowed him to trust himself.
“Keep trusting that process, and that made me be able to go out there today and not even think about it,” Barkley said. “I knew we were going to have a great game, and we were going to make some plays. It was just when the timing was right. It wasn't really just a mindset change, it's going out there and just believing in myself, trusting myself, and letting my God-given ability show.”
And, to a man, his teammates said that was fun to watch.
“Yeah, it was a lot of fun,” said quarterback Daniel Jones. “You saw the explosiveness and it was fun to watch him. He's had a great camp and seeing where he's come from – he's battled back from a lot of adversity, a lot of injuries. To get out here and do what he did today was a lot of fun to watch as a teammate and as a friend.”
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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