One Giants’ co-captain has a little more riding on the outcome of Saquon Barkley’s contract dispute than the rest of his teammates.

While the whole locker room likely is tuned in to see whether the front office and the face of the franchise can reach a deal in the next week, safety Xavier McKinney could feel the effects most directly.

McKinney is entering the final year of his rookie contract and could be the Giants’ most prominent free agent next offseason.

If Barkley signs a multiyear extension before Monday’s deadline, the franchise tag — one per team per year — will be available as an option for the Giants to use to keep McKinney in 2024.

If negotiations stall out and Barkley is forced to play this season on the $10.1 million franchise tag, then the possibility remains that he will be tagged again next offseason at the cost of $12.1 million and thus McKinney would reach free agency sooner.

A third option — applicable if Barkley struggles or gets injured this season while playing on the unwelcome tag — would be for the Giants to tag McKinney over Barkley in 2024.

Because the Giants exercised Second-Team All-Pro left tackle Andrew Thomas’ fifth-year option, he already is under contract through 2024.

General manager Joe Schoen showed his intent to be proactive about securing young talent by re-signing Dexter Lawrence, but McKinney, 23, is an intriguing case.

He missed the first 10 games of his 2020 rookie season with a fractured foot and missed another seven games last season with broken fingers on his left hand after a freak ATV accident.

In his one full season, however, McKinney tied for the NFL lead among safeties with five interceptions, made 93 tackles and graded as No. 14 among 92 safeties by Pro Football Focus.

Playing with a club on his hand after he returned from injury last season, McKinney logged every snap in the two playoff games, highlighted by his fourth-down stop in one-on-one coverage against Giant-killer T.J. Hockenson to seal the wild-card win over the Vikings.

“There’s no deal he should do right now if he thinks he’s just scratching the surface of his talent,” said CBSsports.com contracts expert Joel Corry, a former NFL agent. “He hasn’t really been healthy. That [big season] was for a different regime, so it only counts so much when he didn’t do it for them. If he thinks that second year is who he can be, there’s no deal to be made because I’m pretty sure the Giants aren’t going to pay him like one of the better safeties right now.”

Schoen already has cut safety Logan Ryan and let safety Julian Love leave in free agency.

Like running back, safety is regarded as a non-premium position around the league.

But McKinney might hit the open market at the right time after some recent big spending on safeties — elevating the salary on a safety’s tag to more than $14.5 million in 2024 — whereas Barkley was about two years too late to cash in on a temporary upturn for running backs.

McKinney has made about $6.5 million over his first three seasons and is due another $1.75 million this season.

Some former second-round draft picks are in a rush to secure their first big contract even if it means shaving a little off of top market value, but that is not how McKinney’s new agent, David Mulugheta, typically operates.

Hired in January, Mulugheta represents three of the seven current highest-paid safeties — the Chargers’ Derwin James, Falcons’ Jessie Bates and Cardinals’ Budda Baker, all of whom earn at least $14.75 million per year with more than $33 million guaranteed.

He made one of his first big splashes by helping safety Landon Collins secure a then-record-setting six-year, $84 million contract ($44.5 million guaranteed) to leave the Giants for Washington as a free agent in 2019.

McKinney deflected contract questions earlier this offseason, shifting focus to the team and continuing to play at a “high level.”

The Giants paid McKinney’s salary when they could’ve withheld it for a violation of contract after his accident last season, which accomplished the intended goal of building goodwill with McKinney after he was transparent about the circumstances of his injury.

“They need him to have the year that he had his second year this year,” Corry said, “and it sounds like they won’t have any qualms paying him then.”