Latest Hard Knocks Suggest Someone Tampered With Saquon Barkley

Participation in the off-season Hard knocks It hasn’t been ideal for the Giants. It could be problematic for another team, too.

The third episode of the series feels like someone went after running back Saquon Barkley.

The show opens with general manager Joe Schoen taking a call from Barkley’s agent, Ed Berry. It appears, based on the rest of the episode and Schoen’s ultra-casual work attire, that the call took place the weekend before the trading period opened on Monday, March 11.

During the conversation, Schoen acknowledged that Berry was going to see what else was out there before giving the Giants a chance to match him.

“That was kind of the goal,” Schoen says. “You go out, you find out what it is, and I just say, ‘Yeah, we can’t do that.’ Or, ‘Yeah, yeah, we can.’”

Berry apparently tells Schoen what’s at stake: $12.5 million per year, with $25 million guaranteed. And it’s clear that if the Giants offer that, Barkley will take it.

That said, it’s unclear exactly which team that number came from. Later in the episode, Schoen says he hears the Bears are raising the price and the Eagles are out of the running. So maybe it was the Bears. Or maybe it was the Eagles. Or maybe it was someone else.

The next question is whether the NFL will do anything about it. In exonerating the Eagles from speaking directly to Barkley during the 52-hour negotiation period, the league said this: “As with every review, if new evidence were discoveredThe league could reopen the investigation.”

If the Eagles were the team that spoke to Berry before March 11, that would be considered new evidence. And the potential violation would shift from a direct conversation with Barkley after the negotiating window opened to a negotiation with Barkley’s agent. Before the negotiation window has opened.

The Giants don’t seem to have cared. Schoen probably encouraged the effort to assess the market, even though it happened before teams were allowed to share that information with a player’s agent.

Technically, it doesn’t matter. Tampering is tampering, even if the team that’s the victim of it accepts it. Practically speaking, though, it would seem unfair for the league to hit the Eagles, Bears or whoever for participating in a process that gave the Giants the clarity they wanted to make a decision about what to offer Barkley.