Direct snap to Saquon Barkley keeps Giants up and running
New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley against the Chicago Bears on Oct. 2, 2022. Credit: AP/John Minchillo
In a young season in which almost everything seems to be going the Giants’ way, a key indicator of the phenomenon may be that one of their darkest moments sparked one of their brightest revelations.
When Daniel Jones sprained his ankle and Tyrod Taylor suffered a concussion in Week 4 against the Bears, the Giants found themselves without a quarterback. Running back Saquon Barkley had to come in and receive several shotgun snaps just to keep the offense functioning before Jones returned to his traditional place on the field, his mobility and his options severely limited.
Necessity and invention have a maternal relationship, even in football, and while some concepts take weeks, months, even years of polishing and grinding through film before they come together, others are born in a flash of desperation.
Those few plays with Barkley seemed to get the Giants' coaches thinking. If they could snap the ball directly to their best player when they had no other options, why couldn’t they do it when they did?
“I feel like the ball is in my hand and I can make the right decision,” Barkley said Sunday of the simplicity of the plays in which the middle-man quarterback is eliminated from the transaction. “Just go for the keys and go through my rules and just play the game.”
Welcome to the latest wrinkle in the Giants’ playbook:
The WildQuon.
It’s not entirely new. The Giants ran a direct snap to Barkley once before Jones’ injury. In the first quarter of the Week 2 game against Carolina they called it on first-and-goal from the 5. Barkley gained 3 yards.
Since Jones limped off the field though (and perhaps more significantly since Taylor left with his the concussion) it has become something of a staple.
It was used three times to close out the game against the Bears for a total of 18 rushing yards, 14 of them on two handoffs from Barkley to Matt Breida. Against the Packers the Giants used it three times for 45 yards and a touchdown. Barkley went for 40 on their first attempt at it Sunday and then scored the go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter on a 2-yard run with backfield wingman Gary Brightwell leading the way.
“I kind of just tried to make a play to be honest,” Barkley said of the touchdown and his options to run up the middle or outside. “I knew what we were doing and once I saw GB go out, I knew it was only a corner there. GB is making a block and it's a foot race and I guessed right.”
The Giants have averaged 10.5 yards per play over the last two games in which the ball was snapped directly to Barkley. In those two full games the Giants are averaging 5.3 yards on the plays in which the quarterback receives the ball. It’s a very small sample size and probably won’t stay that way over a longer period of time or with more application, but the direct snaps to Barkley are so far twice as effective as all the other offensive snaps combined.
It’s also significant the snaps to Barkley don’t necessarily wind up with Barkley running. Three of the six in the last two weeks have been handoffs to Breida. Some Barkley runs are up the middle, others to the outside. There might even be a pass option out of it at some point.
“We feel like we can find a way to make some plays in that situation,” Barkley said. “It's a different run and it's a different type of scheme where we dress up in a different way to get it going. Obviously the Packers came out with the mindset to try to stop the run and that’s probably what every team is going to do from now on. We've just got to continue to adjust.”
The Giants came upon this adjustment thanks to a stumble. It’s only helped steady their stride.
Notes & quotes: Rookie defensive lineman D.J. Davidson was placed on season-ending injured reserve with a torn ACL suffered on Sunday. The fifth-round selection was injured on a Packers punt in the third quarter of the game in London and was carted off the field. He is the third Giants draft choice to tear his ACL this season following offensive tackle Marcus McKethan (fifth round) and linebacker Darrian Beavers (sixth). The Giants did not make a corresponding move to replace Davidson on the active roster, but undrafted rookie Ryder Anderson in on the practice squad along with Henry Mondeaux, who appeared in two games this season but is dealing with an ankle injury.
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.
