It’s true that the New York Giants haven’t looked all that great in the past couple of games. The Giants couldn’t do all that much to seriously challenge New England, as the top ranked Patriots defense was able to get the better of the inexperienced Daniel Jones and a weak running game. In the game prior, against Minnesota, the Vikings defense also held firm and only allowed the Giants to score 10 points as they shut Jones down for the first time in his career.
However, there was a common thread in both games – the Giants had multiple missing players. The most important player that was missing through both of the games was Saquon Barkley, whose absence effectively doomed the Giants to a poor performance in the running game. Barkley is, after all, considered the top offensive player on the roster right now and the central figure to the Giants’ ground attack.
With Wayne Gallman, Sterling Shepard and Evan Engram also out against the Patriots, it’s not hard to see why Daniel Jones struggled even more than in his first loss, against the Vikings.
Strangely enough, though, this also gives some hope to the New York Giants going forward, despite the losing record at the moment. Barkley, despite spraining his ankle in week three and potentially going out for eight weeks, could very well make a comeback against the Cardinals on Sunday.
https://twitter.com/saquon/status/1183548914487742470
The Giants without Saquon Barkley isn’t the same as the Giants with him, and it wouldn’t be far fetched for the team to have an uptick in performance once their star running back is in the mix. There would be less pressure on Daniel Jones at quarterback, after all, if opposing teams had to worry about dealing with one of the league’s top running backs.
Is it guaranteed that the Giants will start winning immediately if Barkley comes back? No, but it does give the Giants a much better chance, one that they haven’t had since week three when Barkley was originally injured. We haven’t yet gotten to see a single full game with both Barkley and Jones playing, as Barkley was injured in the first half of Jones’ debut. Until we do see just how having a running game changes things for the Giants, it may be too early to make definitive judgments about the team.