The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Giants select RB Barkley at No. 2
The Giants sucked for Saquon.
The reward for an unbearable 3-13 season is Saquon Barkley, 21, the dynamic Penn State running back whom Giants GM Dave Gettleman selected with the No. 2 overall in the first round the 2018 NFL draft on Thursday night.
Gettleman chose the best player available on his draft board, opting to try and help Eli Manning win a third Super Bowl over selecting a quarterback to succeed him.
The decision confirms the franchise’s confidence in both Manning’s longevity, despite being 37 years old, and in second-year QB Davis Webb’s potential.
It also indicates the Giants did not feel any of the remaining QBs on the board were clear future studs, despite the quarterback frenzy surrounding them at the top of the draft.
The Cleveland Browns selected Baker Mayfield No. 1 overall.
Gettleman worked the phones on potential trades back but opted to stay at two and take a player at a major position of need.
There will be arguments that Gettleman did the wrong thing by not trading back if didn’t intend to take a QB, considering the Giants roster lacks depth.
He will get criticized also for selecting a lowvalue position at such a highly-paid draft slot (running backs are more replaceable than other positions; Barkley’s rookie contract, though, is expected to pay him a total of just under $32 million guaranteed for four years).
Gettleman, however, does not follow convention.
He and head coach Pat Shurmur were hired in place of fired GM Jerry Reese and coach Ben McAdoo to do what they felt was best to turn the franchise around.
Gettleman, 67, is a career scout, and he trusted his and his staff’s evaluation of the prospects at the top of their board.
Barkley, 21, is a combination of size, speed, athleticism and character rarely seen at running back. He registered what many have called the best NFL Combine performance ever, running a 4.4 40-yard dash, bench pressing 225 pounds 29 times, jumping 41 inches in the vertical, and running a 4.24 20-yard shuttle, all at 6-feet, 233 pounds.
Those numbers only confirmed what Barkley’s play on the field for the Nittany Lions already had shown: that he is one of a kind, compared most often to the previously incomparable Barry Sanders.
Barkley rushed for 3,843 yards (5.7 yards per carry) and 43 touchdowns, and caught 102 passes for 1,195 yards and eight more TDs, in three seasons at Penn State.
He also took back two of his 15 kickoff returns for touchdowns in his final season as a junior in 2017.
Barkley, like Odell Beckham Jr., is the type of special talent that can find the end zone from anywhere on the field. So the Giants could be armed with two home-run hitting threats if they re-sign Beckham to a long-term contract and keep him a Giant. If they rekindle trade talk and move Beckham, Barkley perhaps could be viewed as replacing that element. Shurmur indicated optimism, though, about OBJ sticking around with the Giants.
The Giants desperately needed to upgrade their running back position, especially if they believe they still can win with the immobile Manning. They haven’t had a 1,000-yard rusher since Ahmad Bradshaw in 2012. Their leading rushers since have been Andre Brown (492 yards in 2013), Andre Williams (721 yards in 2014), Rashad Jennings (863 yards in 2015, 593 yards in 2016) and Orleans Darkwa (751 yards in 2017). And they’re all gone.
Enter Barkley, who now headlines a backfield that also includes promising second-year back Wayne Gallman, veteran free agent signing Jonathan Stewart, and third-year back Paul Perkins, who is recovering from surgery on a pectoral muscle, an injury he sustained on his own prior to the start of the club’s offseason workouts, per a source.
And no one can be happier than Barkley’s arrival than Manning, who has gone from a Week 13 benching in favor of Geno Smith to watching the organization do an aboutface and forego drafting his heir in order to add Barkley to what is now Manning’s best-ever group of position players at his disposal.