The Giants and Eagles hate each other. The organizations. The fans. There is nothing but ill will.
But Sunday’s game at MetLife Stadium is even more than a rivalry. This is not just the Giants vs. the dirty Birds.
This is the Giants vs. Saquon Barkley.
This is Barkley, the face of the Giants’ franchise for the past six years, returning to northern New Jersey in Eagles green.
And this, therefore, is Judgment Day.
It’s Judgment Day for Joe Schoen’s decision to let his most popular player, his best offensive player, defect to the one hated foe that co-owner John Mara didn’t want to see No. 26 join.
It’s Judgment Day for Barkley, who will have to perform through heavy pressure as the boos rain down from the scorned New York fans.
How will the Giants’ fans greet Barkley in his return?
“If I had to guess, probably not warmly,” quarterback Daniel Jones said Wednesday. “It’s a competitive game. It’s Eagles vs. Giants. So it’s a big divisional game. There’s a lot going on outside of Saquon Barkley being back.”
Not really.
There is more at stake than Barkley’s individual performance. But Barkley’s fortunes in this battle will touch everything. There will be consequences somewhere, whether it’s South Philadelphia or across the parking lot in East Rutherford, N.J.
Start with the Eagles: a loss Sunday would be catastrophic for coach Nick Sirianni and GM Howie Roseman.
Sirianni’s job is on the line. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie deliberated after last season before any public confidence was shown in Sirianni’s return. Bill Belichick is a phone call away.
The Eagles have a 4-7 record since Week 13 of last season. Sirianni and quarterback Jalen Hurts do not appear to be on the same page.
Sirianni’s shouting at a fan after last Sunday’s narrow home win over the Cleveland Browns turned out to be nothing more than a fun back-and-forth with a fan heckling the coach to run the ball more with Barkley.
But Sirianni nevertheless apologized and said he is “disappointed at how my energy was directed at the end of the game.”
A loss to the Giants would drop the Eagles to 3-3, with Washington on its way to 5-2 after playing the pathetic Carolina Panthers on Sunday, and resurrect the Giants’ hopes to 3-4.
Schoen and Daboll, meanwhile, have a lot riding on Sunday’s result.
In the big picture, if the Giants lose this game, they will fall to 0-3 in the NFC East this season, 0-4 at home, 1-5 against the Eagles in Schoen’s and Daboll’s three years, and 1-10 combined against the Cowboys and Eagles during that span.
And most importantly, they will have lost to Barkley, creating both emotional and bottom-line ramifications.
For one, Schoen told Mara during free agency of Barkley’s market that the GM had heard “Chicago’s driving the price up and Philly’s out,” based on a text he’d received. Schoen said he would make a couple calls to confirm if that was true or not.
Mara grabbed the top of his nose and squinted as he listened. Schoen then adjusted his body nervously in his chair.
“I might have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philly, I’ll tell you that,” Mara said, in the defining line of HBO’s offseason ‘Hard Knocks’ series. He later added: “I’ve been around enough players, but he’s the most popular player we have — by far.”
Schoen drafted wide receiver Malik Nabers No. 6 overall out of LSU to replace Barkley as his top weapon. Nabers may return to the field Sunday after missing two games with a concussion.
The Giants’ GM did not believe in paying a running back as much as the Eagles forked over to land Barkley. He selected Tyrone Tracy Jr. out of Purdue in the fifth-round instead.
Jones and the Giants are still only averaging 16 points per game after six games, though. Did letting Barkley go position the quarterback best for success?
Not to mention that Barkley represents a collection of former Giants players who feel like they weren’t properly valued here under Schoen, who felt disrespected during negotiations and took their talents elsewhere.
Eagles defensive back James Bradberry, Seahawks safety Julian Love and Packers safety Xavier McKinney all endured that to different degrees. Wide receiver Darius Slayton, who is still on the Giants, was squeezed into a humiliating pay cut at the start of 2022 before getting an extension after that year.
Offensive lineman Nick Gates, who is now on the Eagles, didn’t feel the love at the end. Center Jon Feliciano, now of the San Francisco 49ers, was not re-signed after helping to lead the team to its first playoff berth since 2016.
In June 2023, Barkley publicly called out what he considered a double standard: he saw inaccurate and misleading details of his contentious negotiations with the Giants getting leaked to the media, and Barkley said it wasn’t him.
“We say ‘family business is family business’ in that facility, in that building, and I’m gonna stick to that,” Barkley said. “The thing I’m frustrated most about is, like how I said ‘family business is family business,’ and then sources come out and stories get leaked, and it didn’t come from me … I feel like it’s trying to paint a narrative of me, a picture of me that’s … not even close to being true.”
Barkley eventually returned to the Giants at the start of last season’s training camp, bit his tongue and played the good soldier for one more year.
He contributed way more to the 2023 team than anyone even realizes: the Giants’ operation was on the verge of a complete collapse. Barkley kept it together, barely, by standing in front of the cameras as the team’s leader, professing confidence in the Giants’ leadership and refusing to air the franchise’s or his dirty laundry publicly.
This is what made Tiki Barber’s “dead to us” radio rant about Barkley’s Philly aims in the spring so ridiculous and off-base: Barkley kept the Giants alive last season, even if it was partially to help his own cause by showing suitors what kind of teammate he was in the face of adversity.
“Honestly, I think he did a lot of good for this organization,” star Giants defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence said Wednesday. “I would have wanted him to still be here, but [it’s an] I’m happy if he’s happy type of thing. We just want to play football. We all should get what we deserve. I don’t understand why it’s a big deal for him to go do something that makes him happy.”
Lawrence and Barkley are still great friends. So are Jones and the Eagles’ back. Barkley even was a guest at Lawrence’s wedding this past offseason.
That said, of course, Sunday he is an Eagle. So the friendship goes out the window for those 60 minutes.
“I appreciate what he did for this organization and who he was as a teammate and a person to me, most importantly,” Lawrence said. “But Sunday is war. And he knows that.”
Sunday is war. Sunday is Judgment Day.
Sunday is the kind of day that will warrant a bonus episode of HBO’s Hard Knocks on the Giants if Barkley does what he couldn’t do in negotiations — and makes them pay.
