Giants icon Tiki Barber reacts to Saquon Barkley news

Retired running back and New York Giants legend Tiki Barber understands why Saquon Barkley returned to the team ahead of its first training-camp practice of the summer. 

"The only thing he could do was go to camp and ball," Barber said about Barkley during Tuesday's edition of the WFAN "Evan and Tiki" program, per Ryan Chichester of Audacy. "But it’s hard to do that when everybody’s telling you to hold out." 

Barkley hinted in an interview recorded earlier this month he could sit regular-season games out to protest the fact he and the Giants failed to reach an agreement before the July 17 deadline for teams to sign franchise-tagged players. Instead, the 26-year-old put pen to paper on what is essentially a one-year adjusted franchise tag worth $10.1M with incentives that can increase the contract's worth to $11M but only if the Giants reach the playoffs.

Barkley couldn't have been fined for skipping practices and preseason contests had he left the original tag worth $10.091M unsigned as his representatives continued negotiations with Giants general manager Joe Schoen. When all was said and done, Schoen somewhat surprisingly retained the right to use the tag on Barkley again next March and did so weeks before the start of preseason play. 

"I give Joe Schoen so much credit for getting this — I call it a deal, but it’s not really a deal, because he’s giving him $2M in signing bonuses that he was making already," Barber added about the situation. "The biggest takeaway for me is that Joe Schoen pulled off a master class in avoiding probably the only distraction, outside of injury, that could have affected the early part of Giants training camp." 

Former Giants running back and Super Bowl XXV Most Valuable Player Ottis Anderson previously argued Barkley should've accepted the last offer Schoen made before the July 17 deadline, and franchise icon Carl Banks advised the 2018 first-round draft pick to sign the tag and not be "a principled fool." 

Similar to Giants beat writer Paul Schwartz of the New York Post and ESPN's Dan Graziano, Barber noted that Schoen emerged from the contract dispute as the big winner. 

"It looked like it could have gotten ugly with Saquon Barkley…but the reality is, if you don’t have to pay somebody, you don’t have to," Barber said about a system that likely will continue to anger veteran running backs well beyond Tuesday's developments.