It’s a Giants town right now with Big Blue headed to their first playoff game in six years – but when asked about his memories of watching postseason football as a kid, Saquon Barkley was seeing Green.
“I was a Jets fan growing up, so the biggest ones for me were the two AFC Championships back-to-back. What Mark Sanchez did as a rookie and then came back,” Barkley said, referencing 2009 and 2010.
But as a numbers lover and student of the gridiron, he’s also been looking at the best performances at his position in postseason history.
“I went back and looked up the most rushing yards in a playoff game, career rushing yards in a playoff game. Emmitt Smith has like 1,500 yards and 19 touchdowns, which is insane,” Barkley said. “Eric Dickerson, I think it was against Dallas, put up like 240 in a single game, and Raheem Mostert, not too long ago for San Francisco, put up like 200 yards.”
Close enough, as Emmitt was 1,589, Dickerson was 248, and Mostert was 220 in the 2019 NFC Championship Game, but the fact he undersold them all shows just how historic the performances were.
Come Sunday, Barkley is excited for the opportunity to get on the playoff field for the first time, but it’s going to be no different than any other game in his mind.
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“I know it’s a playoff game, more attention and more eyes. But to me, I won’t be nervous. I’ll be hyped, I get hyped for every single game. But nervous? I wouldn’t say that. For me, it’s just another football game,” he said. “As a player, as a competitor, you want these moments. This is stuff you dream about as a kid. Playing in the playoffs, going into a hostile environment, loud, making big plays, silencing the crowd. That’s stuff you think about as a kid and that opportunity is here.”
Barkley’s career best, for the record, is 189 yards against Washington in December 2019, and if the Giants need to feed him 30 or 40 times to get the win, so be it.
“I want the ball as many times as needed to win this game. Whatever I’ve got to do. That’s been my motto throughout the whole season and I’m sticking with it,” Barkley said. “The job was to get into the playoffs and we found a way to do that. So whatever we’ve gotta do to get the win, I’m willing to do for my team. The type of person I am, I want to go out there and make plays for my team and help them win a football game. Whatever way that's possible, whether that’s with the ball in my hands or without the ball in my hands.”
He’s spoken to former Giants defensive end Michael Strahan, as well as other Big Blue legends, about playoff experience, but he also got a text from an interesting name: former Vikings RB Adrian Peterson.
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“AP is someone who, when I was going through my knee process, that I reached out to. He had great advice and someone I can lean on. It's pretty cool when you look at your phone and there's a text from AP saying, ‘Congrats and happy for you and go kill it in the playoffs,’” Barkley said. “I didn't even think (about him being a Viking), but as I was saying that, I was literally like, the timing of it is funny. I'm a big fan of the game and a fan of AP. To get a text like that from one of the greats, it means a lot.”
He didn’t divulge Peterson’s words, but did say Strahan’s advice was “don’t make the game bigger than it needs to be.” Barkley is in line with that thinking, even if he and the Giants know that there are no more tomorrows if they lose at any point.
“The only way to make the playoffs is through having the right mindset, hard work and winning enough games to get there, but the goal is not just to make it – you want to give yourself the opportunity to compete for the whole thing,” he said. “We gave ourselves that chance. Now, we got to take it game by game. We got a big one, the biggest one because it's the next game on our schedule, and if you don't take care of this, that's the playoffs.”
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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