Saquon Barkley: From anger to relief after latest injury

Saquon Barkley did not want to get on the cart.

Who could blame him? The last time he made that ride it took him 11 months to return from a torn ACL.

"I didn’t want to have that mentality," Barkley said. "I wanted to tough it out."

Barkley eventually hopped onto the vehicle and was driven away from the Giants’ bench on Sunday in Dallas, but that journey turned out not to be as long-term as the previous one. Barkley suffered a sprained ankle that will likely sideline him for a week or two – he almost certainly won’t play Sunday against the Rams and said he is "day to day" – but should not adversely affect him much for the rest of the season.

As he sat on that bench at AT&T Stadium, though, Barkley wasn’t sure what his immediate future held, and his emotions got the better of him.

He said he was "frustrated" and "exhausted" and found himself asking "Why me?" in his first comments since the injury.

"I was mad at myself, mad at everybody, mad at the world," he said. "I had just rehabbed for 10 or 11 months to get back on the field and I got hurt from rolling my ankle … I’m human. Obviously I had those thoughts and allowed those thoughts to creep in."

They’re gone now, Barkley said, and he has since readjusted his focus from anger and pity to returning from this injury.

"I’m just going to attack the rehab process," he said.

He’s not even thinking about the ramifications from this injury, which will cause him to miss time for the third straight year as he heads toward a second NFL contract.

"That’s the last thing that is crossing my mind," he said.

Barkley did not think he had hurt himself that seriously when the injury occurred. He was running a route and stepped on the foot of Cowboys cornerback Jourdan Lewis, twisting his ankle. (Barkley exonerated Lewis, saying it was an innocent tangle between them and had his step been a split second earlier or later it could have been Lewis’ ankle that was twisted.)

"I thought it was a little roll," he said. "It’s happened before. I did not expect it to swell up like that. Didn’t expect it to swell up that fast."

By the time the medical staff was looking at it on the sideline, though, the joint had blown up to more than twice its normal size. That’s when Barkley started to worry. He tried to walk it off, but couldn’t. He tried to avoid the cart, but couldn’t do that either.

He acknowledged that the ankle injury could be a "blessing in disguise" for him and give him time to get his repaired knee even stronger. Barkley had jumped from splitting reps in the opener to the team’s every-down back rather quickly.

Not that he thinks his knee needs that.

"I felt like I had just started hitting my stride," he said of his play, which included two touchdowns in the win over the Saints. "Before the Dallas game, you just know when you are going to have a good game. You feel right. I felt pretty good before the Dallas game."

He felt pretty awful when he had to leave it, though.

And now, he’s trying to get back to where he was, knowing this time it shouldn’t take almost a full year to get there.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.