It sounds like the relationship between the New York Giants and star running back Saquon Barkley has seen better days.
Per Paul Schwartz of the New York Post, Giants general manager Joe Schoen was asked during a Thursday news conference if Barkley will be on the active roster at the start of the 2023 season after the 26-year-old declined to sign the franchise tag in the early days of the team’s voluntary offseason program.
“You have to ask him,” Schoen responded. “I’m not sure. I don’t know what his plan is.”
Schwartz and ESPN’s Jordan Raanan are among in-the-know individuals who have mentioned Barkley is “unhappy” his rights for the upcoming campaign were retained via the non-exclusive franchise tag worth roughly $10.1M. However, multiple reporters have also said that Barkley likely won’t hold out through training camp even though Schoen seems ready to let the 2018 first-round draft pick play on the tag later this year.
“When we had the conversations with Saquon it was known we were going to get to a certain point and then we were gonna move on and regroup at some other time,” Schoen added. Per Schwartz, Schoen also said he hasn’t spoken to Barkley “in three or four weeks.”
It was reported earlier this week that “there was a three-year deal in the $13M per season range on the table earlier this offseason” regarding talks between the Giants and Barkley. Schoen made it known in late March that such offers were no longer available to Barkley now that the Giants used the franchise tag, and Pro Football Talk’s Josh Alper noted that the executive said Thursday that “nothing’s changed” there.
While the Giants and Barkley have until the July 17 deadline for teams to sign tagged players to agree to a long-term deal, it’s believed that he could accept his fate and sign the tag before he’s possibly replaced via a first-round draft pick next Thursday night.
