ESPN NFL Draft analyst Todd McShay thinks Saquon Barkley to the Giants is ‘inevitable’
Todd McShay during a SportsCenter Special: Mel and Todd's Mock Draft on April 4. Credit: Melissa Rawlins / ESPN Images
Todd McShay believes the Giants want to change their offensive identity, and their pick with the No. 2 selection in the upcoming draft will point them in that direction.
“I’ve heard really strongly that there are important people in that building who believe in Saquon Barkley the player, that that’s what they want to be,” McShay, the ESPN draft analyst, said on a conference call on Wednesday. “The Giants want to be a run-first, physical football team and Saquon can basically be the face of that franchise moving forward several years. He can be the back that they’ve had in years past. If you spend 10 minutes with Saquon you understand that he’s going to be the face of a franchise. He’s so likeable, so easy to get along with, a great, genuine young man who loves the game and is going to give you everything he’s got every week.
“It just feels to me like it’s inevitable,” he added, “that Saquon Barkley is going to be a New York Giant.”
McShay certainly isn’t the only one to think that. Barkley has become a popular pick for the Giants in mock draft circles. And his assertion that the Giants want to be better at running the ball is not something plucked from thin air. General manager Dave Gettleman said it himself when he was introduced on the job in December.
“At the end of the day, it’s the same three things you had to do in ’35 that you’ve got to do now in 2018,” Gettleman said of the keys to winning. “You’ve got to run the ball. You’ve got to stop the run. You’ve got to pressure the passer.”
“That’s a big component in all of this: What is your emphasis?” McShay said of taking a running back high in the first round. “If you are trying to throw the ball around and go 60-40, 70-30 pass to run, then I don’t know that it makes sense. But if the Giants want to be a run-first team and that’s what I’m told the emphasis is, then Barkley makes all the sense in the world.”
Run-first, of course, may be more a figure of speech. On a team that has Odell Beckham Jr. and Sterling Shepard and Evan Engram, it’s hard to imagine the Giants running the ball more often than they pass it. But they certainly could stand to be more balanced, not only in terms of play-calling but in production. Barkley could give them that. He also helps the passing game as a target, as a blocker, and as a player defenses must account for at the line of scrimmage.
There are, of course, other running backs in the draft who can be had in later spots who can help the Giants. McShay agreed with that. But with Barkley, he said, “This guy is different, though.”
There also has been a prevailing trend in the NFL that running backs are not valuable enough and don’t last long enough in the league to warrant a high pick.
“We’ve actually had a good run the last few years between Leonard Fournette, Zeke Elliott, Todd Gurley,” McShay said. “After two years of going without a running back in the first round we’ve had this influx of talent. If you are committed to the run game and that’s what you want to be as an organization, then it makes sense. Dallas wanted to be that team and you saw when [Elliott] was healthy and on the field in his rookie year the impact that he made. They put together the offensive line and wanted to emphasize the run game and it worked. You see with good coaching this past year what Todd Gurley was able to do, arguably the MVP of the league. Leonard Fournette last year on a team [Jacksonville] focused on running the football.”
Barkley offers all of that, and then some.
“The talent is there,” McShay said. “It doesn’t take a superscout to see that he’s a highly talented back . . . He’ll pass protect and he can catch the ball out of the backfield. You’re getting an every-down starter and a player who brings intangibles and leadership and a work ethic that you rarely find in a player who is your most talented player on your football team. I think he’s a franchise-changing type player.”
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.
