Giants running back Saquon Barkley watches during the second half...

Giants running back Saquon Barkley watches during the second half of a preseason game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022, in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: AP/John Minchillo

The Giants played all of their healthy offensive starters on Sunday night with one exception.

Saquon Barkley did not participate in the preseason game against the Bengals as the Giants begin to taper his reps with an aim toward getting him to the Sept. 11 opener in Nashville in peak condition.

“I just thought it was probably best for the team,” head coach Brian Daboll said of his decision to rest the running back. “He’s had a really good camp. Gave him the night off, basically.”

Daboll has not been shy or skittish about pushing Barkley this summer. There have been live tackling drills in practice and some heated contact in drills and Barkley played the opening series last week against the Patriots in which he had four carries (doubling his preseason career total) and a reception. This is the first training camp in which Barkley has looked and felt explosive since his rookie season, and putting him in bubble wrap for the next three weeks is probably not the worst idea.

“I think we’re kind of just taking it day-by-day, going with the flow,” Barkley said late last week. “I’m just trying to do a really good job of listening to the coaches, listening to the training staff and come here and try to compete and get better every single day. My moto this year is whatever the coaches want me to do, I just go out there and try to compete and do it to the best of my ability.”

On Sunday the coaches wanted him to sit.

The likeliest plan moving forward is to use Barkley in the controlled situations of Thursday’s joint practice with the Jets and then sit him again for the preseason finale on Sunday. The next time he plays in a game will almost certainly be in Tennessee on Sept. 11.

Daboll said his desire was to see backup running backs Antonio Williams and Jasaun Corbin play against the Bengals, so even if Barkley had gotten onto the field Sunday night it would have been for a cameo.

“He’s taken a lot of reps,” Daboll said of Barkley’s workload this summer. “He’s had some physical practices … so I made a decision to just hold him.”

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