When Saquon Barkley puts on his track spikes, he draws extra motivation from the nagging thought that he could’ve doubled the yardage on the Giants’ second-biggest gain of the playoffs last season.
About 2,400 miles away from the Giants’ facility, which he is prohibited from entering because he is an unsigned player controlled by the franchise tag, Barkley has spent more than three months’ time this offseason training at Exos, a private coaching company, at its location in Phoenix.
While his teammates ran through familiar drills at organized team activities and the minicamp in East Rutherford, Barkley stayed sharp under the eye of pro elite performance specialist Nicholas Hill, who took The Post inside the Pro Bowl running back’s private workouts.
“One of the big goals for him is he wanted to get back his speed burst that he felt like he had his rookie year,” said Hill, who has trained Barkley every offseason since he tore his right ACL in 2020. “He feels like he is 100 percent from the knee injury, but there’s still that little bit of another gear that he felt like he was missing.
“He definitely has that gear right now. The players did their throwing camp in Charlotte last week, and he said he’s never felt better or faster running routes.”
Barkley rushed for a career-high 1,312 yards during the 2022 regular season, but was caught from behind by the Eagles at the end of a 39-yard run that had the potential to be an 80-yard touchdown during an NFC divisional playoff game.
It was his taxing 375th touch of the season; only two NFL players had more.
“Oh, it stuck with him,” Hill said. “We talked about that play very early on. He’s a phenomenal athlete, very confident, but also self-aware. He understands the areas he needs to improve and attacks them head-on. For the first 2-to-3 months, the big focus was straight-ahead linear speed.”
As Barkley’s agent and the Giants negotiate toward closing the gap on a contract extension, the 26-year-old is training twice a day, six days a week to prepare for his sixth NFL season.
A sample schedule might include an hour of physical therapy to prevent soft-tissue injury, a speed session focused on mechanics and acceleration that contrasts pushing heavy sleds with timed sprints through small gates, and a weight-room workout capped by boxing.
“He has to be able to move 405 pounds on his back squat at a certain speed in order to check the boxes he needs to check,” Hill said.
Hill advocates for players to attend the NFL’s voluntary OTAs, but Barkley’s contract dispute allowed him to spend about twice as much time as usual at Exos, diving into details that a 6-to-8-week program can’t support. It’s the trade-off for missing team film and playbook study.
“If you are in OTAs, you do everything the team is doing,” Hill said, “whereas I think this has been a really good offseason for him to focus on him because he got to be so specific with his training. When you have an athlete of his caliber, you want to be able to fine-tune a Ferrari.”
If no deal is reached by the July 17 deadline to extend tagged players, Barkley will have to decide whether to report to training camp on July 26 or send a message by skipping practices.
His training this week at Exos optimistically operated as if camp was around the corner, incorporating more lateral cuts, bending, leaning and other football-specific movements into drills that force Barkley to be “creative in space.”
As is standard procedure, Hill said he obtained the GPS-tracked numbers that Barkley clocked last camp from the Giants’ strength and conditioning staff.
“The biggest thing is to make sure his tissue and his body is prepared to run that volume,” Hill said. “I can build him into those numbers so he can step in like he didn’t miss a beat. You are preparing guys for 21 weeks, so you don’t want them to peak in August.”
The Giants fan who isn’t glued to social media and is asking “What did Barkley do all spring?” will notice the results when …
“He doesn’t get caught from behind,” Hill said bluntly. “My job is not to make a running back a better running back. By getting you faster in a straight line and really good at decelerating, the difference you are going to make in the strength, power and elasticity will translate to you sticking your foot in the ground. He will be able to get in and out of a jump cut that much quicker. He will be able to hit the hole and use his vision that much faster.
“The angle that maybe a defensive back had on him before won’t be there because he is just bursting. All it takes is a half-step. Week 1, it’s going to look like he is playing faster. He’s starting to match up the veteran side and now you have that rookie-year speed-power-performance layered on top.”
NFL stars Deebo Samuel, DeAndre Hopkins and Odell Beckham Jr., as well as Giants teammates Parris Campbell and Isaiah Hodgins, have trained with Hill and Barkley at times this offseason.
“Saquon is the person who is going to motivate an entire group, who is going to push for every extra rep, who is going to be grinding at the end like he is in the beginning,” Hill said.
“There is no lack of motivation, but I don’t know if there has ever been a lack of motivation … not just for himself but for the team. I know he was hurting not to be at OTAs, but he is continuing his work so when the time comes and all that business is out of the way, there will be no falling back with him.”