Saquon Barkley felt used, abused and misled by the Giants.
Because “Saquon” is a documentary that was filmed in real time over the course of nearly five years — beginning on the day that he underwent surgery to repair his torn ACL in 2020, through his tense 18-month-long contract negotiation with the Giants and ending with this Eagles winning the 2025 Super Bowl — the video diary is a portrait of raw emotion in extreme times.
Forget looking back on key moments through the rosy lens of perspective.
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tRY IT NOW“Saquon” — which will be released Thursday on Prime in conjunction with Amazon’s broadcast of the Eagles at Giants game — takes its audience on a roller-coaster ride of self-doubt, anger and jubilation.
The main focus, however, is the feelings that Barkley kept closely guarded during the contract standoff with the Giants from November 2022 through March 2024.
“Everyone gets to f–k me over,” Barkley said. “But I can never do what I want to do.”
There are numerous times when Barkley contemplates doing “s–t that’s not in my character” — like airing a trade demand or a dirty-laundry Tweet — but backs off when cooler heads prevail. Along the way, Barkley keeps lowering and lowering his asking price in hopes of staying with the Giants while feeling as if general manager Joe Schoen barely budged.
“I would’ve signed for $10 million, $11 million [per year] if they would’ve just operated a whole different way,” Barkley said before signing with the Eagles in free agency. “If I felt in my heart they tried their best to get it done.”
Here are five things revealed in the documentary, which was viewed by The Post.
At the height of his frustration in July 2023 — on the final day for franchise-tagged players to sign long-term extensions — Barkley asked Giants owner John Mara if he could seek a trade.
“I’m not going to do that,” Mara told Barkley. “That makes no sense for us. To be honest with you, it’s not going to be in your long-term best interest to do that. There’s no way that I would allow that at this point. You are too valuable to this franchise.”
Months earlier, Schoen warned him that ownership would not grant a trade request as Barkley threatened to go public because he was “looking like an idiot.” Schoen said Barkley could have his agent call around privately to gauge his market.
“You sure you think this is the right course of action?” an exasperated Schoen said as Barkley played Madden, hinting that he would want a first- or second-round pick in return. “Think about it for a little bit — the deal that was offered. We had already stretched to put you in very good company over a lot of other backs.”
As The Post reported in July 2023, the final offers exchanged by the Giants and Barkley finished less than $2 million apart in both the total value of the three-year contract and the total amount guaranteed. The Eagles signed Barkley for more per year and more guaranteed after another season of mileage.
The Giants also passed on trading Barkley at the November 2023 trade deadline despite a 2-6 record.
Barkley and Barber — two of the greatest Giants running backs — engaged in a public spat after Barber said Barkley was “dead” to the Giants for signing with the Eagles.
But tensions simmered long before then.
After Barber criticized Barkley’s pass blocking during a poor game in Week 1 of the 2020 season, wondered if he was an “every-down running back” and called him “a big back who wants to play small” during his national radio show, Barkley considered bringing a Barber jersey to Soldier Field to wear as a statement if he had a monster game.
Barkley instead tore his ACL and wound up “butt— naked in the shower crying” for 20 minutes.
“I was in a place where I was not playing the game for the love of it. I was going to force a great performance,” Barkley said. “All those idiotic and immature things were running through my head at the time.”
After he turned down the first contract offer made during the bye week in 2022, Barkley carried the ball a then-career-high 35 times in the next game (a win against the Texans) to push the Giants to 7-2 and the brink of a playoff berth.
At the time, Barkley still wanted to be compensated like the NFL’s highest-paid running back. That stance softened over time, but not in the immediate aftermath of being offered only $18 million guaranteed on a three-year deal (when the tag guaranteed $10.1 on a one-year deal) and the Eagles eventually paid $26 million guaranteed, as The Post previously reported.
“It was a joke,” Barkley said of the negotiation. “It really was a spit in my face. And then come out here and give me the ball 35 times. They really don’t appreciate me to be completely honest. They think they are trying to run me into the dirt, get what they can get and then hopefully something bad happens so he can f–king go somewhere else.”
On March 7, 2023 — the day that he was franchise-tagged — Barkley’s daughter predicted that he would end up on the hometown Eagles. They discussed how cool that would be to be close to her grandparents.
Barkley’s longtime friend, James Wah, predicted they were “going to Philly.”
“This isn’t Madden,” Barkley said in the final hour before he was tagged. “This is my life.”
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He vowed to give the Giants “the benefit of the doubt” in free agency because “I want to stay in New York.”
Barkley was holding his infant son when he got a text from Daniel Jones — eight minutes before the tag deadline — that he signed an extension with the Giants. Two minutes later, Barkley was tagged.
One year later, when Barkley wasn’t tagged, the Eagles swooped in.
As Barkley won NFL Offensive Player of the Year and reached the golden 2,000 rushing yards standard last season, Giants fans kept saying, “He wouldn’t have done that here.”
The night before he faced the Giants for the first time in October 2024, Barkley said “it is the first time that I don’t know how I feel.”
“Am I having an MVP-type season if I’m with the New York Giants?” Barkley asked rhetorically. “No.”
When he sat out the regular-season finale against the Giants with a chance to break Eric Dickerson’s regular-season rushing record, Barkley said it would have been sweet to set the mark against the Giants.
“For this doc, for the story, you can’t make this s–t up,” Barkley said. “The story would be so much sweeter. But truly, truly, truly not for the reason why people think. There’s so many people in [the Giants] that had to deal with my knee. The player you are seeing right now — the MVP candidate, records on records — would not be possible without those guys over there.”