Saquon Barkley, Giants can’t reach deal ahead of contract deadline
Saquon Barkley and the Giants couldn’t close a small negotiation gap, and now will be 2,400 miles apart when training camp opens.
The two sides ended weeks of silence and exchanged offers Monday but couldn’t reach an agreement on a multiyear extension by the NFL-imposed 4 p.m. deadline for franchise tagged players, sources told The Post.
Barkley is left to make a tough decision on if and when to sign his franchise tag — a one-year, $10.1 million pact — and whether to miss games as well as practice.
In the meantime, he will train on his own in Phoenix.
“It is what it is,” Barkley wrote on Twitter after talks broke down.
What is it exactly?
A potential lose-lose resolution to a tense negotiation, but Barkley is taking the bigger gamble as he risks injury or a down year while the Giants have the leverage of a second franchise tag in 2024 to again keep him from free agency if he is elite.
The Giants’ final three-year offer was $11 million per year with guarantees between $22 million and $23 million, multiple sources told the Post.
Those numbers were all within $1 million to $2 million on both ends of Barkley’s reduced asking price.
Either way, the numbers were close enough that common ground seems easy to find with incentives over the first two years, but both sides felt that they had budged as much as they could.
Barkley, 26, previously turned down a contract worth $13 million per year with $19.5 million guaranteed, sources said, because he is guaranteed $22.2 million if he plays on back-to-back tags in 2023 and 2024.
Multiple independent agents described $19.5 million as a non-starter.
The sides cannot resume talks of an extension until after the 2023 season.
Barkley is expected to be at the Exos training facility when the Giants open camp July 26 to both protect his body against the physical toll of practice and send a message of discontent, but he could drag his signing into the regular season if he is willing to miss weekly paychecks.
He is not subject to fines for missing camp as long as the tag remains unsigned.
The Giants could rescind an unsigned tag at any point and leave Barkley as a free agent alongside running backs Dalvin Cook and Ezekiel Elliott, but that is considered unlikely because they see the full Barkley on- and off-field package as a value at that price tag.
So, the Giants will enter training camp with a backfield of Matt Breida, Gary Brightwell, Jashaun Corbin and rookie Eric Gray unless they make a move.
They also have to wonder if not signing Barkley offsets the extension of Dexter Lawrence and sends the wrong message into the locker about taking care of their own players when teammates see a frustrated co-captain who produced, said all team-first things and is an NFL Man of the Year nominee.
Barkley must decide whether to drag his absence into the regular season, which proved disastrous for Melvin Gordon in 2019 and regrettable for Le’Veon Bell in 2018.
He would forfeit about $560,000 per game.
“He wants to be in New York and New York wants him there,” one league executive said. “That’s what makes this unexpected.”
Barkley is coming off a career-high 1,312 rushing yards in the regular season and a career-high 377 offensive touches including the playoffs.
He made $38.6 million over the first five years of his career with the Giants and has been candid about wanting to earn a spot in the franchise’s Ring of Honor.
The franchise tag gave the Giants all the leverage since March 7, and Barkley added agent Ed Berry of CAA as co-representation with Kim Miale of Roc Nation last month in hopes of jump-starting talks.
Christian McCaffrey (49ers), Alvin Kamara (Saints) and Derrick Henry (Titans) all have more than $22 million guaranteed on their contracts, and Cook and Elliott topped that number on past deals with the Vikings and Cowboys, respectively.
All five of them and Nick Chubb (Browns) had deals paying at least $12 million per year as of last season.
But the running back market tanked after Chubb’s extension in July 2021, bottoming out this offseason. Cook and Elliott were released, Joe Mixon (Bengals) took a pay cut to avoid the same fate, Austin Ekeler (Chargers) failed to force a trade and settled for a paltry raise, and Miles Sanders (Panthers), Jamaal Williams (Saints) and others ran into a free-agent market in March that topped out at $6.35 million per year and $11 million guaranteed.
Barkley might have been the exception to the rule — at least six teams were thought to be interested in him in March — but that never happened.
A negotiation bet that Barkley would reach free agency because the Giants needed the tag (one per team) for Jones backfired when Jones signed a four-year, $160 million extension just before his deadline.
