Super Bowl 2025: Saquon Barkley gets first taste of NFL's brightest lights
NEW ORLEANS
Saquon Barkley was always a star. From the moment he arrived in the NFL as the second overall pick by the Giants in 2018 and started ripping off those blazing runs that made him one of the game’s most dynamic young players, all eyes seemed to be upon him.
When the NFL filmed its 100th anniversary commercial after that rookie season with a century’s worth of greats interacting at a banquet, passing a golden football between them, the final image of the montage was Barkley taking a toss, hurdling a would-be-tackler and sprinting away.
Take us into our next century, Saquon, is what the league essentially was saying.
But that didn’t happen. Not that way. Barkley was mired in losing situations and suffered a few serious injuries. Discussion of his Giants career became more about what might have been — and what might never be — than what it actually was.
Like the game’s Norma Desmond, he was always big — it was the team that was too small.
On Monday night, though, Barkley was ready for the close-up for which he’d been grooming himself his whole life.
The running back ascended to the throne at the center of Opening Night for Super Bowl LIX on the verge of fulfilling the promise that accompanied him into the league seven years ago . . . with a slight costume change from blue to green.
New York, for all of its big, bright lights and culture-swaying gravitas, couldn’t get Barkley to a Super Bowl. After signing as a free agent, he has gotten the Eagles back to one against Kansas City on Sunday and is 30 rushing yards shy of completing the most productive season ever by a running back.
“It means everything,” Barkley said while soaking in the scene around him Monday night. “You have to take it all in and enjoy it.”
That’s the first-timer advice he said he has received from others.
“It’s all part of it,” he said of basking in the Bowl. “Obviously, you stay locked in and you keep the main thing the main thing, but you never know when the next time is you get to be here. It took me seven years to be here. It’s a great opportunity to have this platform, so I’ll try to have as much fun as I can.”
There were plenty of times when Barkley was the best player on any field with the Giants. On Sunday, he’ll be the best player on the field in a Super Bowl.
Sure, quarterbacks are more “valuable” and defenders make game-changing plays and there is even a Hall of Fame-bound tight end whose renown has exploded beyond the sport in the past two years because of whom he is dating. None of them, though, can do the kinds of things Barkley can.
And New York is never far from his thoughts. Asked which vet had the greatest influence on him as a young player, he cited Eli Manning (who, by the way, said last week he was rooting for, gasp, the Eagles, because of Barkley).
When talking about the pros and cons he and his family physically listed before signing with the Eagles, he said there was just one negative: “I might get some flak because I played in New York.”
And when free-agent quarterback Jameis Winston came along and asked Barkley which team he thought he should sign with, he said: “I think New York needs a quarterback now.”
It was hard to tell if he was helping Joe Schoen with some recruiting or dragging him for the decision he had made that left the team without anyone at that position.
While most of this is new to him, this isn’t Barkley’s first trip to the Super Bowl. He’s a regular attendee in the hoopla and build-up to the games. He’s been making those brand-building rounds since after his rookie season.
“That stuff is fun, Radio Row and all that,” he said last week of his previous responsibilities at the games. “But I like this better.”
He usually leaves before the actual contest even kicks off. That’s what he did after spending a few days in Arizona two years ago. He wound up watching Super Bowl LVII between Kansas City and Philadelphia on the flight home.
“Of course I was rooting against them,” Barkley said of the Eagles, who lost that game, 38-35. “They had knocked us out of the playoffs. There was no part of me that wanted them to win.”
This time he’s all-in for the Eagles and they for him. Back in Philadelphia, there is a mock shrine created at one end of the team’s locker room with two action photos of Barkley playing for the Eagles. Under each is a strip of tape with the words “The Chosen One” and “Our Savior.”
Eagles general manager Howie Roseman, who signed Barkley to the three-year, $37.75 million contract that now looks like a steal, said he never had any doubt that Barkley would ascend to such heights.
“I’d like to say he’s exceeded expectations, but he’s always been one of the best players I’ve ever seen whenever I’ve watched him, and I have always known about what kind of person he is because it’s not hard to find that out,” Roseman said.
“So I’m really not surprised by any of this, and I don’t say that in an arrogant way. It’s based on who he is, nothing to do with me, because this is who he’s always been. I’m just glad everyone gets to see that.”
On this stage, finally, it’s hard to miss.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
