Saquon Barkley dropped a well-timed documentary Thursday morning on Prime Video, hours before the Eagles invaded MetLife Stadium to take on the Giants.
“SAQUON” features more intriguing behind-the-scenes moments of Barkley’s Giants negotiations and eventual signing in Philadelphia.
There’s a scene with Barkley playing EA Sports’ Madden video game the entire time he speaks with Giants GM Joe Schoen, who is trying to manage the public optics of his running back’s discontent.
“I was snapping while I was on the phone with him, by the way,” Barkley says to a friend after hanging up with Schoen. “I won, 35-0.”
There is a phone call with Barkley asking co-owner John Mara directly if he will sign off on trading him in July 2023.
“You’re telling me you want me to be a Giant, I’m telling you I want to be a Giant for life, but the negotiation and the contracts I’m getting sent don’t really feel like it’s matching that same energy,” Barkley tells Mara.
And there are raw moments of frustration, like Barkley’s comments on Nov. 13, 2022, after his initial contract talks with the Giants and a 24-16 home loss to the Houston Texans.
“It’s not even the fact that we didn’t get nothing done. It was a joke. It was really a spit in my face,” Barkley says on the phone to a confidant. “And then to come out here and give me the ball 35 times, they really don’t appreciate me, to be completely honest. They’re trying to run me into the dirt, get what they can get and hopefully something bad happens so he can go somewhere else.”
The reminder of Barkley’s meteoric rise to Offensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl champion in his first year in Philadelphia, though, is no longer the worst embarrassment for the Giants.
Now it is Daniel Jones’ star turn with the Indianapolis Colts and the quarterback’s recent comment that he experienced the “next level” of NFL preparation when he signed with the Minnesota Vikings after the Giants released him.
“I thought I worked really hard, I tried to work really hard, and it was important for me to prepare, watch film, study. And I think I did that,” Jones said of his time in New York on the Fitz & Whit podcast. “But then going to Minnesota, I saw how Sam [Darnold] prepared, how Kevin [O’Connell] prepared those guys, Josh McCown … that crew, and how detailed they were day in and day out on every little bit of the plan and how they’re gonna study it, what they’re looking for, walking through it, quizzing each other in the quarterback room.
“That made a big impression on me,” Jones continued. “And I was like, ‘OK, this is maybe the next level of some of that stuff.’ And I think that changed. I think Kevin, just how aggressive he was in the playcalling. It’s play fast, but it’s a lot of drop back shots, taking their chances. And that made an impression on me, too.”
Jones now has fully blossomed with Indianapolis coach Shane Steichen and has shattered some of Peyton Manning’s records while leading Indianapolis to a 4-1 start.
The Colts lead the entire NFL in points per drive (3.39) and rank second in points per game (32.6). They became the first NFL team since 1940 to punt only once in their first three games.
Jones is one of only two quarterbacks in the NFL, along with the Rams’ Matt Stafford, to post a 105.0 or higher quarterback rating in four different games this season. He ranks third in the NFL with 1,290 passing yards. He has a 71.3% completion percentage.
And his sack percentage has plummeted to 2.6%, per Pro Football Reference, compared to 8.53% in 2022, 15.79% in 2023 and 7.84% in 2024.
Schoen and Daboll were hired by the Giants in the first place because they were party to Buffalo’s drafting and coaching of quarterback Josh Allen. They are paid handsomely because they’re supposed to be experts with QBs.
But Jones’ success and comments reveal the ugly truth: It got a lot better for him once he left New York.
It gets a lot better for a lot of players once they leave the Giants.
It’s not just about escaping a bad team on the field for a better one, either. It’s also about getting away from a franchise that leaks and scapegoats players and coaches like Jones and others when everything goes wrong to protect those who are really at fault.
Barkley rewrote his career narrative quickly once he got out from under the dark cloud in East Rutherford, N.J. Now Jones has, too.
The list of players who found greener pastures once they left is long: there’s second-team All-Pro safety Xavier McKinney and Seahawks starters Leonard Williams and Julian Love.
Sterling Shepard, who the Giants nearly ran out of the league, just caught a fourth quarter touchdown for the Buccaneers last Sunday.
Tight end Darren Waller retired rather than continue playing for the Giants, got traded to Miami and now has three touchdowns in two games for the Dolphins.
Even Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts should be a cautionary tale about being connected to Daboll.
The 2017 Alabama Crimson Tide had to bench Hurts at halftime of a national championship game with Daboll as their one-year offensive coordinator. In 2025, Hurts won a Super Bowl MVP in a blowout win over Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs dynasty.
The Eagles’ Barkley, now having moved on from his ugly Giants spat at the end, makes clear that his new Prime Video documentary is about way more than just his controversial departure from New York to Philly.
“People try to make it about the Giants and me getting tagged and letting me walk, that’s not it,” Barkley says in the film. “It’s the growth of a professional athlete and how you go through ups and downs.”
These stories together, though, are all about the Giants: first Barkley, now Jones.
How much more evidence do John Mara and Steve Tisch need that they need to overhaul everything. Not just the GM and coach, but how they hire and empower the next leaders of their franchise to make changes, as well.
