Report: Giants not interested in signing Saquon Barkley long-term ‘at this point’
New York Giants star running back Saquon Barkley will not be attending his team’s voluntary offseason workout program as he has no contract in place.
Barkley has been tendered the ‘non-exclusive’ franchise tag (worth $10.1 million for one season) but has opted not to sign in favor of maneuvering for a longer-term deal.
That deal may not be coming anytime soon, reports Ralph Vacchiano of FOX Sports.
The Giants don’t have much of an interest in signing Saquon Barkley to a long-term deal at this point, I’m told. They tried and failed because the sides weren’t close. The $10.1M franchise tag is a good deal for them and they’re content to leave things that way for now.
— Ralph Vacchiano (@RalphVacchiano) April 12, 2023
The evolution — or devolution — of the running back in pro football has devalued the position as many teams have turned to a ‘committee’ approach over the ‘bell cow,’ or one back, strategy
So, what is Barkley, a two-time Pro Bowler, actually worth in this market? Michael Ginnitti of Spotrac fleshes it out:
Our latest valuation for Saquon Barkley (analyzing his 2021-2022 campaigns), places him at a $12.3M per year figure, or a 4 year, near $50M total value contract. If we take that 52% guaranteed number from above, we’re talking about $26M practically guaranteed, or 2 years, $26M practically speaking.
The easy way to contrast and compare here is to base our valuation against his current reality – two franchise tags. His 2023 tender comes in at $10,091,000. A second franchise tag is calculated as 120% of that number, or $12,109,200. These two tags combine for $22.2M.
So in theory, our fair market valuation for Barkley only represents a $4M guarantee increase over a simple two-tag plan.
There you go. Barkley won’t get much more per annum on a longer-term deal. It’s actually what we predicted his fair value was a few months back.
As Ralph noted, Barkley does not like the daw of playing under the tag. He would like more security and Giants seemed willing to do business but have made nothing more than indirect overtures in that direction since contract talks broke off last fall.
“I told Saquon we want him to be a Giant for his entire career,” Giants co-owner John Mara said at last month’s owners’ meetings. “He provides leadership; he’s a great player, and we’d like to be able to get something done with him at some point. The running back market is what it is right now. I’m still hopeful that at some point we will be able to come to an agreement.”
Barkley wants top-of-market money, which would pay him $15-16 million per annum over four or five years. The Giants are obviously not interested in doing that. Ginnitti believes a compromise is in order.
A little less on the full guarantee, a little more on the total value, and even more available via active roster bonus & attainable — but not likely to be earned for cap purposes — incentives.
The compromise deal could look something in the neighborhood of four years, $52 million worth $13 million per year with $24 million fully guaranteed at signing.
Stay tuned.
