NFC Notes: Saquon Barkley, Darius Slay, Commanders, Eagles, Giants

Commanders

Commanders HC Ron Rivera said DE Chase Young looks explosive and has done a great job thus far in camp.

“He looked good,” Rivera said, via Commanders Wire. “He really did. Real excited about it. Looks like he’s got some explosion back, which was one of the really neat things in terms of watching him, his get off. He looks like he’s more confident.”

Eagles

Eagles CB Darius Slay was asked by reporters what it’s like to have his former head coach from the Lions, Matt Patricia, joining Philadelphia’s coaching staff this offseason. The two had a tumultuous relationship during their time in the Motor City.

“It’s another day at the office,” Slay said, via Jenna Malinowski of the Detroit Free Press. “We both got the same goal, just going out there to compete and win a championship, so that’s the main focus.”

Giants

As the cap has risen over the past decade, salaries have gone up for every position except one — running back. That’s the environment Giants RB Saquon Barkley finds himself in this offseason as he tries to swim upstream against the market for respect and a well-earned payday. Barkley made an impassioned case for why running backs can still matter for teams and are worth investing in, especially for the Giants. 

“There’s a [stat] that goes up about quarterbacks in the Super Bowl and how many rushing yards the top rusher [has], but every team is not — like Pat Mahomes is a two-time Super Bowl MVP, two-time MVP. And not everybody has Pat Mahomes,” Barkley said via Pat Leonard of the NY Daily News. “And this is no knock to Daniel Jones. So don’t even try to flip it like that. And then you look at the Eagles. Jalen Hurts is a great quarterback. That team is amazing. But every team is not the Eagles. Every team don’t have that much talent.”

Barkley’s argument is that every opponent the Giants faced last season had one goal: stopping him.  

“When you come to my situation,” Barkley said, “when you come to me personally, I feel like I helped our team a lot. I feel like not only on the field but off the field … [and] as a leader. Obviously, there’s a conversation about my numbers going down. I think there’s a whole lot of other stuff that happened to play [into that].

Some have pointed to his numbers and efficiency declining over the second half of the season as an argument not to overpay him, but Barkley said that was a result of the coaching staff tweaking its gameplan to be less one-dimensional. The Giants leaned hard on Barkley in the first half of the season and he had 779 of his 1,312 rushing yards in the first eight games before the bye week.

Another 153 came in the first game after the bye against the woeful Texans run defense but Barkley didn’t top 100 yards or 20 carries in a game the rest of the season. Meanwhile New York’s average depth of target went from 6.5 yards to 5.8 and Jones’ passing attempts went up from 28 per game to 31.8 in that same span.

“We were a one-dimensional team in the beginning of the season. We were running the ball,” Barkley said. “We have a great coach. We played the Detroit Lions [Week 11]. They came in, bust[ed] that ass, stopped me, and we had to switch it up. We have a great coach, with [Brian Daboll] and [OC Mike Kafka], and we had a whole new game plan. We came out and found a way to get the job done and make it to the playoffs.”

• The Athletic’s Dan Duggan points out Barkley has to at least not dismiss the idea of sitting out the 2023 season as it’s one of the few leverage points he has in negotiations with the team while on the tag.
• However, Duggan says it’s incredibly unlikely the image-conscious Barkley turns down $10.1 million not to play for the playoff-hopeful Giants this season. 
• NFL Network recently reported that the offer the Giants’ previously pulled from franchise RB Saquon Barkley is back on the table. However, Pat Leonard says that is not true “as of this moment.”