NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT
Barkley says teammates don’t think Giants erred taking him with No. 2 pick
FIFTEEN years and two Super Bowls ago, the Giants made the right move trading for Eli Manning.
The question that won’t go away for years and years is whether they made the wrong move drafting Saquon Barkley with the second-overall pick instead of Sam Darnold.
“People that believe that, that’s their belief, [to] each his own, everyone has their own opinion,” Barkley told The Post. “My job is to make sure the people in this locker room and the people upstairs, on this team, don’t think it was a mistake to draft me No. 2.
“My honest answer, and not in any arrogant or cocky way, I think just the way I’ve worked, I think I’ve gained a lot of my teammates’ trust and belief that it was a smart decision to draft me.”
Barkley and Manning were helping Visa launch its latest money management version of Financial Football outside MetLife Stadium with 100 or so high school students on a sunsplashed Wednesday.
Mercifully, there were no boos for the punching-bag quarterback, no slings and arrows landing everywhere around him.
“I understand, that’s just part of playing quarterback, you gotta be tough and you gotta be able to handle the tough times and … just try to do my job,” Manning said.
Just because you are no longer playing like a champion doesn’t mean you aren’t one.
Giants co-owner John Mara never had to worry about the phone ringing at 3 in the morning with Manning as his quarterback — and you can bet the ranch that he won’t be making a stink about Manning or Barkley doing more playing and a little less talking any time soon.
If Manning is The Pride of the Giants, then we can call Barkley The Class of the Giants.
Manning, asked about the owner’s public scolding of Odell Beckham Jr., said, “Obviously, everybody’s gotta worry about playing better, and that’ll fix a lot of problems, and we go out there and just worry about football and proving it on the field.”
At 37, Manning’s age and contract conspire against him returning in 2019. You ask him whether he still wants to retire a Giant and he tells you, “That’s always the mindset, but my focus is just right now getting back to winning games.”
Ah yes, winning ballgames. A lost art in East Rutherford, but you find out plenty about people during hardship.
“At the end of the day, I’m playing a sport I love. I’ve been driven by this moment since I was a little kid,” Barkley said. “There’s a lot of people that I’ve grown up with or I knew that will love to be in the position I’m in, and I get to wake up every single day and be an NFL football player.”
Archie Manning loved the game that way, Peyton Manning loved the game that way, and Eli Manning still seems to love the game that way. He hasn’t asked Peyton for advice during this ordeal.
“No advice. Talk to my brother a bunch,” Manning said. “He knows what it’s like going into a new offense, and how it can just take time to just get everybody going and everybody on the same page.”
Nobody expected this. Nobody expected Manning to become Captain Checkdown behind a rebuilt offensive line that has betrayed him.
“It sucks seeing that everyone [is] just trying to put all the blame on Eli, and that’s not the case,” Barkley said. “At the end of the day, you win as a team and you lose as a team, and as a team we gotta get better.”
But the quarterback’s record is what the quarterback’s record says it is, and Manning hasn’t won a playoff game since Super Bowl XLVI, and isn’t part of this QB video-game revolution.
“I just want to prove the Giants right by winning a Super Bowl here one day, by being a great player one day. I want to be one of the best to ever play in the Giants uniform. I want to be one of the best to ever play in the NFL,” Barkley said. “I don’t really care for outside factors, or ‘The Giants should have taken this QB or that QB.’
“You never know. What if they picked that QB or this QB and they never end up winning a Super Bowl? Then people are gonna be, ‘Oh,’ it’s gonna be vice versa, ‘Well you should have done this.’ Just the way the season’s going right now, I guess that’s why people are saying that, but like I said, it’s my job just to continue to gain the trust and belief of my teammates.”
The Giants will find their next quarterback. There will be life after Eli Manning. And the next quarterback won’t be telling anybody that drafting Saquon Barkley was a mistake.