Saquon Barkley's comeback checklist complete with everything but a Giants win

Saquon Barkley’s comeback is nearing completion. In the first month of the season he has gone from being unsure whether he could even play in the opener to handling all but 10 of the team’s 60 offensive snaps in Week 3. He’s broken a long run, the 41-yarder against Washington, and even scored a touchdown, a 1-yarder against the Falcons.

So what’s missing?

The same thing that has been so elusive for him throughout his whole career with the Giants, an issue that predates his torn ACL.

A win.

Barkley has not walked off the field with a victory since Dec. 22, 2019. That’ll be a span of 651 days without the feeling of a win by the time Sunday’s game against the Saints rolls around. To put it in perspective, the last time Barkley celebrated at the end of a game in which he played Pat Shurmur was the head coach, Eli Manning was his teammate, Joe Judge was coaching on a Tom Brady-led team in New England, and masks were just for Halloween.

The closest he has come to the exhilaration of winning was two weeks ago when he visited alma mater Penn State for their victory over Auburn.

In his career with the Giants, Barkley has played in and finished 32 games. The Giants are 7-25 in those contests. They are 7-10 in games in which he has not played at all. They’re not a better team without him on the field, but it would be nice to have empirical evidence of his value.

If he wants to start making that case on Sunday against the Saints, Barkley may have to do most of the heavy lifting himself. The Giants will almost certainly be without starting receivers Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton, the only two players on the team who have caught a touchdown pass this season, because of hamstring injuries that kept them from practicing on Thursday. They’ll likely be starting their fourth different offensive line combination of the four-week season, too.

Barkley challenged his teammates during last week’s loss to the Falcons to "do something about" the losing and "step up and make plays." It sounded as if he was putting that onus upon himself. On Thursday, though, he said he can’t do it alone.

"You can’t have that mindset that it has to be on one person," he said.

Besides, Barkley may not be capable of that. While his production and ever-improving health have been remarkable considering the seriousness of his injury just over a year ago, they’re not exactly living up to Saquon levels. If he was Joe Runningback he’d be hailed for all he has accomplished this season. But he’s Saquon Barkley, which means he is measured not by the mundane but the spectacular.

"People probably expect me to come out here and jump over people and do crazy things, and obviously I would love to do that too, but at the end of the day I’m human," he said. "I have to keep getting better. My team needs me to be better."

There is, of course, a balance to that. Barley has been criticized for looking to do too much on some of his runs and receptions, dancing and cutting instead of following his blockers. It’s a battle Barkley has been fighting since he arrived in 2018, knowing when to swing for the fences and when a single to right is just as effective.

"We talk a lot about dirty runs, four- or five-yard runs that put you in a manageable second- or third-down situation," offensive coordinator Jason Garrett said. "But in an effort to do that you never want to take away his ability to make big plays. The space plays he makes are dynamic.

"You don’t want to take the Saquon out of Saquon."

If the Giants get that version of Saquon on Sunday, they’ll have a better chance at a victory. If they don’t, it’ll likely be just another game in which he plays then plods off the field in disappointment.

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.