The second episode of HBO’s “Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants,” featured how conversations between a player and their team occurred. The episode centered around Joe Schoen and his idea to keep the Giants star running back, Saquon Barkley, in New York, offering him the chance to become a Giants legend and to keep “your name up here forever”, per Schoen’s conversation with the Giant’s assistant general manager, Brandon Brown.
At the end of the episode, Schoen reaches out to Barkley and says this, after some greetings:
“Just mulling over this, the right thing to do is let you test the market to see what your value is. Um, I don’t want to do the franchise thing or all that stuff again. I don’t want to go through that. We’ve both been through that. If you really want to be a Giant for life and you’re interested in coming back, see what your market is and have [agent] Ed [Berry] come back to us and we’ll see if we can come to an agreement.”
Saquon responds in thanks, and Schoen continues his questioning, asking, “Can you give me your word on that, or are you not going to give us a chance?”
Saquon doesn’t answer the question, leaving it at “I mean, I already told you where I want to be, so…”
The conversation wrapped up after that, and eight days after filming, when the free agency negotiating window opened, Barkley signed a three-year deal with the division rival Philadelphia Eagles for nearly $38 million, with $26 million guaranteed.
Before this, Schoen had a call with Ed Berry, where he expressed his worry about potentially lowballing Barkley and making him feel “disrespected.”
Negotiations can be difficult to navigate, but during the call with Berry, Schoen talks about Barkley’s age and how running backs begin to fall off at age 27. Barkley turned 27 in February. Whether the Giants wanted to keep Barkley or not, Barkley has displayed some great speed at leaving the New York Giants behind, even at the “old age” of 27.
