Through his first season in the NFL, Saquon Barkley seems to be doing everything right. Despite representing a massive percentage of the production on a struggling New York Giants offence, Barkley always keeps a positive attitude. Despite being the prized player, Barkley knows his place on the team and is not letting it get to his head.
That’s why we’re thinking that Saquon didn’t mean to be throwing any shade when he claimed a touchdown pass he caught that was thrown by Odell Beckham Jr. was “one of the best he’s seen”. It just played into an unfortunate storyline that plagued the Giants organization this year.
That would be the storyline of two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning being a shadow of what he used to be as a passer. All year long the passing game mostly revolved around checkdown tosses to Barkley himself, but Eli would rarely take shots down the field.
It started to cause even more of a controversy when OBJ went public with his displeasure about being stunted by the lack of passing. You can understand why a clip of Saquon explaining the toss from a wide receiver being better than his veteran NFL quarterback would be a touchy statement.
Luckily it was following about 20 seconds of Saquon praising Eli’s work ethic and leadership (though there is no mention of his current abilities under centre…), so we’re thinking he was just talking and not taking shots.
Saquon doesn’t want to make any waves. Especially not when pretty much everyone who knows anything about football is extremely excited about what he’ll become.
(H/T Get Up ESPN)
