QUON’ AND ON AND ON
Time to ride Barkley and get offense going
THE COWBOYS needed rescuing last Sunday against the Lions, and Ezekiel Elliott rescued them. The Giants need rescuing this Sunday in Carolina, and they should turn to Saquon Barkley to rescue them.
Elliott erupted for 152 yards on 25 carries and four catches for 88 yards and a touchdown on the same day Barkley was inexcusably limited to 10 carries and 16 touches overall.
If you have a beast, you feed him, simple as that.
You feed him the football in space as a safety valve for Eli Manning, you feed him the football and let him run with it.
When yo u h ave a talent l i ke Saquon Barkley, you don’t neglect or abandon your running game if you do not have success early. It is only a matter of time before he breaks one.
And the more you feed the rookie beast, it will eventually open things up for the $95 million beast, Odell Beckham Jr.
“It’s a long season,” Barkley said, “but you can’t say it’s a long season forever.
“Coach said something perfectly today, he said, ‘ The only thing that’s not capable of doing this season is an undefeated season, and that only happened one time.’”
Asked Barkley how big of a load he would be able to handle, he said, “Whatever. Simple as that. Whatever the team needs me to do, whatever how many touches they need me to do, how many carries they need me to do, how many plays they need me to do, I’m willing to do it. It wouldn’t bother me. My mind wouldn’t be different, my body wouldn’t be different. At the end of the day, you gotta still come in and take care of your body, I’m still gonna do that no matter if I touch the ball twice or I touch the ball 25 times.”
Barkley knows better than to rock the boat and shout “Just give me the damn ball!”
So I will do it for him: Just give him the damn ball!
Against Iowa last season, Barkley rushed 28 times for 211 yards and a touchdown and caught 12 passes for 94 yards in a 21-19 Penn State victory.
“I can’t take credit for the performance I had today. It’s an 11-man sport,” Barkley said afterwards. “You can’t do it by yourself.”
Barkley (56 carries for 260 yards and 3 TDs, 27 receptions for 193 yards through four games) is too good to be true, in every way.
Barkley on Barkley so far: “I gotta be better. I think I’ve been doing a pretty good job of breaking tackles so far, gotta find a way to break more tackles.
“I was brought here to be an efficient player, and when the opportunity comes, create big plays, and I gotta do a better job there.
“A l ot of the reasons why we haven’t been successful is we haven’t been able to run the ball as well as we are capable of. That’s where my job kicks in, and that’s where myself and the O-line, we’re kind of a whole when it comes to that, where we gotta take that as like a personal challenge and continue to work and get better. And when the opportunity comes, capitalize on it.”
Win or lose, Barkley always looks in the mirror.
“I want to be a great player in this league, and I have to hold myself to that standard,” he said.
He talks about getting back to playing Giants football.
“We gotta get going early, that first play gotta be a 5-yard play, we gotta get the sticks moving somehow, someway,” Barkley said. “Whenever we get the sticks moving, that’s when we’re kinda at our best, that’s when any offense is at their best, to be honest.”
He has learned that there are no more Akrons on the schedule.
“The difference was in college your first five games, four games, I don’t care if you’re in the SEC, the Big Ten or whoever you played, there’s gonna be some cakewalks in there, there’s gonna be some games where you should dominate the team,” Barkley said. “You look so far in the NFL, every team that we’ve played has been mostly a close game. We gotta f ind a way to win that game. Every week’s gonna be a dogfight.”
When Pat Shurmur was asked whether he factors in next Thursday’s game against the Eagles when deciding on injured players (Olivier Vernon, for example) possibly returning Sunday, he said: “In our mind there’s no tomorrows.”
Feed the beast today.