BIG BLUE ASKS BARK TO SHOW A LITTLE BATTLE-DAZZLE

Everybody knows he’s explosive, but Saquon must get it done in trenches too

There will be games this fall when the Giants offense needs Saquon Barkley to make something out of nothing and take one to the house. Barkley’s Penn State highlight reel is filled with such video game-like, game-breaking touchdowns, so it also will be natural for Giants fans to constantly expect the explosive — or often, even the impossible.

And that makes Barkley’s first training camp learning curve somewhat unorthodox. Because normally coaches are trying to build players up into the type of offensive weapons who can score from anywhere on the field.

But with Barkley, it’s the opposite: He already has the talents to dazzle, embarrass defenders and go 80 yards for a TD.

What the Giants need to coach into him is that it’s OK to simply hit a hole, get a few yards, and get back to the huddle to advance the offense and set up the next play.

“The biggest thing is don’t try to do too much every play,” running backs coach Craig Johnson said Sunday of how a rookie like Barkley must deal with sky-high expectations to justify his No. 2 overall selection.

“The people outside are going to say, ‘I’m looking for a superstar that’s going to have explosive plays and go down the field and make all this.’ Don’t worry about that. Just handle what you get. Make sure you make a positive gain on every play. The big plays will come.”

On Sunday, for example, on three different occasions, Barkley received a hand-off and instead of hitting a hole he stutter-stepped or juked looking for that sliver of daylight calling his name. Twice it happened in a goal-line drill, in fact, when the Giants simply need the back to drive forward.

On Monday, on the other hand, Barkley took his first handoff of the afternoon, made a jump-cut to his right to dodge LB B.J. Goodson and then blasted through the hole. That was more like it.

So it will take time. The good news is that Barkley, despite receiving a near-perfect pre-draft evaluation from Giants GM Dave Gettleman, knows he has to get better at it. He actually said so in his introductory presser, two days after being drafted.

“I’m very confident in myself and sometimes that hurts you,” Barkley said on April 28. “I have this mindset and mentality that any time I touch the ball that I can score and I really truly believe that, but sometimes I try to do a little too much. In the NFL a fouryard run is a great run and in college it’s a great run and I started to understand that a little bit, but that’s where I want to get to on the next level and that’s what I think is going to help take me to the next level.”

Still, here’s where it gets even trickier: on at least one of Barkley’s slow developing runs Sunday, there really wasn’t a hole to hit. So what is Barkley supposed to do when his offensive line doesn’t win its battles?

Barry Sanders, the incomparable Hall of Famer whom Barkley has nevertheless been compared to, used to suffer plenty of two-, three- or even 10-yard losses because he was always eyeing the big play. But Sanders’ Lions coaches couldn’t tell him to stop juking and backtracking, because just when it looked hopeless, Sanders would make 10 defenders miss on the same play, run backward, cross the field, and go 70 yards for a touchdown to lift Detroit.

So Barkley is going to have to find a balance.

“The thing that I’ve learned watching guys, when you go for big plays all the time, sometimes you get big messups,” Johnson, the RBs coach, said. “So, I tell (Barkley) trust yourself. If you see a hole, take it. The biggest thing is sometimes when you’re trying to get the extra yard, that’s when your ball security fundamentals aren’t what they need to be and then if we have a turnover, it doesn’t help if you’re getting ready to go the distance. So, a good hard three- or four-yard gain a lot of times will help set up an explosion play later on.”

All the same, dissecting Barkley’s ability to execute a simple four-yard run is nitpicking. His skill set on display at training camp has been as advertised.

Especially as a receiver, Barkley’s cuts and speed out of breaks make it impossible for linebackers to stay with him. Linebacker Romeo Okwara said that while guarding Barkley, you almost can’t afford to stay step-for-step with him even if you tried, because Barkley can stop on a dime so quickly and precisely, it would leave the LB in the dust.

Barkley beat starting LB Alec Ogletree on Sunday for a TD in a red zone drill and again in a one-on-one Monday.

Barkley also picked up a Landon Collins blitz on Sunday to set up a completion from Eli Manning to Sterling Shepard. If Barkley can pass block efficiently as a rookie, it enables coach Pat Shurmur to keep on him the field no matter the call.

Co-owner John Mara, of course, recently cautioned that he is a bit nervous about all the hype around Barkley. But it sounds like Barkley is staying humble.

“I haven’t done anything in this league yet,” Barkley said Friday. “I’ve got to continue to prove myself.”