Saquon starts fast again — then gets phased out, again
It was almost identical to Dallas. Saquon Barkley goes off on the first drive, leading the Giants to an early lead. But his impact is limited from there in a lopsided loss.
Sunday, he notched 55 yards on four carries the first time the Giants touched the ball. The rest of the 28-14 loss to the Bills at MetLife Stadium, he managed 52 yards on the ground, plus 28 more receiving.
“I don’t think you could ask for any better start for the f irst two games that we had, but i t ’s the NFL,” Barkley said after the Giants fell to 0-2 for the third straight season. “They’re going to make plays, and the Bills made great adjustments.”
Barkley wound up with 21 touches. He had 18 carries for 107 yards to go with three receptions on seven targets. That’s an improvement on the loss to the Cowboys, when the star running back had only 15 touches. It’s still not enough, especially since the offense was without No. 1 receiver Sterling Shepard (concussion) and lost de-facto No. 1 receiver Cody Latimer (concussion) early in the fourth quarter.
After the big f irst drive, which Barkley capped with a 2 7-yard touchdown run, he received just three carries over the next three possessions. By then, the Bills had a 21-7 lead, and the Giants were in catch-up mode. Buffalo also made changes the first series, sending more defenders to the line of scrimmage and forcing Eli Manning to beat them.
“On that [first] drive, we had great first- and second-down production,” Manning said. “We ran the ball well, obviously. After that, we just didn’t do as well on our firstand second-down stuff. We didn’t convert on third downs. We got into some third-and-longs.”
Barkley agreed with Manning, harping on the need for the Giants to be better on f irst and second down. As he did a week ago, he didn’t single anyone out, talking about the entire team needing to be better.
“They did a better job and they got the win, but a lot of it is on us,” Barkley said. “But it comes to the point where we keep saying it’s on us, and it is — it’s on us — but we can’t keep talking about it. We’ve got to go out there and do it. We’ve got to go out there and stop making mistakes, get back to playing Giants football, what Giants football is known for.”
Force-feeding their best player may a good place to start.