The New York Giants lost running back Saquon Barkley to free agency, and to the division rival Philadelphia Eagles, no less.
The writing was on the wall for Barkley all of this past season, as he played out the year on a franchise tag, and the Giants showed little to no indication of wanting to retain him.
However, owner John Mara apparently would have preferred that the team made more of an effort to do so.
While speaking about Barkley this week, Mara essentially said he wanted to keep the star halfback, but didn’t want to get in the way of general manager Joe Schoen and others in the organization.
“They knew my feelings that I was hoping it didn’t come to this, but again, at the end of the day I know sometimes every once in a while I read that — ‘Oh, he’s meddling, he’s meddling,’” Mara said, via Art Stapleton of NorthJersey.com.
Mara added that he leaves it up to the people he hires to make those tough decisions.
“No, we’ve run our organization the same way for many, many years,” Mara said. “If the head coach and general manager have a conviction about a player or a group of players, I’m going to let them go ahead and make those decisions. That’s what I pay them for.”
Still, Mara acknowledged that not paying Barkley allowed New York to make other key moves, such as landing star edge rusher Brian Burns in a blockbuster trade with the Carolina Panthers.
“They ask my opinion, I’m certainly going to give them my opinion, and Joe knew that I wasn’t going to be thrilled with him going within the division, but at the end of the day the opportunity to acquire other players, Brian Burns being one of them, that was the direction they wanted to go in, and so I’ll support that,” Mara concluded.
It seems like Mara is more peeved over the fact that Barkley went to the Eagles, meaning the Giants will have to see him twice a year.
That being said, just because Barkley was about to head to an NFC East foe does not mean Big Blue should have reacted by overpaying him.
Saquon Barkley is coming off of a rather rough 2023 campaign and has a checkered injury history, so the Giants probably made the right move by not handing him a lucrative multi-year deal like Philadelphia.
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