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During the offseason, Saquon Barkley left the New York Giants and signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, their NFC East rival. Despite that, Barkley doesn't anticipate a hostile reaction when he and his new team travel to play the Giants in MetLife Stadium this weekend.
Barkley signed a three-year, $37.75 million contract with Philadelphia back in March after playing six seasons with the Giants. While there seem to be some hard feelings, particularly in the New York front office, Barkley believes the Giants-Eagles rivalry is too big for his defection to Philadelphia to play much of a part.
“I don't expect a great reaction. I don't expect to be booed,” Barkley said, via ESPN's Jordan Raanan and Tim McManus. “I look at it like this: The Philadelphia Eagles and New York Football Giants probably played in over 200 games. This rivalry was there before me, and it's going to be there after me.”
“Maybe I'm naive,” he said [h/t ESPN], “but I think it's over. That chapter's closed. I truly don't care no more, and I'm pretty sure fans don't care no more.”
Saquon Barkley, Eagles heading to New York for NFC East battle with Giants
Neither the Giants nor the Eagles are in a great spot at this point in the season. Philadelphia obviously sits in a better position considering its 3-2 record and second-place standing in the NFC East, while the Giants are currently at the rear of the division at 2-4 after a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.
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But it's undeniable that things have gone according to plan for either team. The Eagles, while still very much a contender to win the division, still appear to be reeling from their late-season collapse to end 2023, which resulted in a Wild Card loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Even after defeating the Cleveland Browns following a bye week to get back above .500 on the season, Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni drew criticism from fans and media members for appearing to taunt his own team's fans in the closing moments of a 20-16 home win. The coach, who is 4-8 since the beginning of December, initially said that he was “just excited to get the win” while admitting that it was not “productive” for the fans to boo the team, apologized on Monday for “how [his] energy was directed at the end of the game.”
Meanwhile, the Giants extended a home losing streak in a 17-7 defeat against the Bengals on ‘Sunday Night Football.' New York, which has yet to win a home game this season, very well may slide out of contention for the division by the time its bye week rolls around in mid-November if things continue to trend downward.
Led by quarterback Daniel Jones, the Giants have scored the fourth-fewest points this season and will face an uphill battle the next two weeks; the Eagles and the Pittsburgh Steelers, New York's next two opponents, both rank in the top 10 in scoring defense this year. Additionally, among 31 qualifying quarterbacks, Jones is 25th in completion percentage, 27th in yards per attempt, 27th in passer rating, and 21st in QBR this season.
The Eagles and Giants are set for a 1 p.m. ET kickoff on Sunday.
