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New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley, who is averaging a career-low 3.4 yards per carry this season, came under fire this week by team legend Carl Banks.
While appearing on WFAN, Banks said the Giants “need to have a blunt conversation” with Barkley about his dancing at the line of scrimmage. Banks added that Barkley needs to abandon all the East-West running and focus on going more North-South.
“Carl Banks is well-respected, and I appreciate everything he did for the organization,” Barkley told reporters on Thursday. “As a fan of football, when someone like that speaks or says something, you definitely take that into account. But at the end of the day, like I said, (I’ve) just got to keep focusing on myself, keep focusing on this team and keep coming in every single day and working to get better.”
Although Barkley gave a nod to Banks, it doesn’t sound like he or the coaches intend to change anything.
“I had a conversation with my running backs coach (Burton Burns), and he said that I’ve been doing a really good job of sticking and taking what the defense is giving me, taking the dirty runs,” Barkley added.
Barkley’s 3.4 yards per carry is right in Jason Garrett’s wheelhouse. He’s determined to gain 10 yards every three plays, extending drives and grinding things out despite the elimination of explosive plays.
“We talk a lot about dirty runs, four and five-yard runs that nobody talks about, but they’ll put you in a manageable second-down and third-down situation. It’s important for us to be able to do that,” Garrett said. “He did that in the game the other day — there were a lot of three, four, five, six, seven-yard runs that nobody talks about that were positive runs.”
While the Giants and Garrett focus heavily on those three- and four-yard runs, they insist they don’t want to eliminate Barkley’s big-play potential.
“I think the biggest thing with Saqoun, is you don’t want to take the Saqoun out of Saquon,” Garrett added. “Absolutely we want to be physical, we want to be downhill, he’s a part of that, but at the same time you don’t want to take Saquon out of Saquon.”
This is just another exposed flaw in Garrett’s offensive system. Not only is it archaic and outdated, it puts an already suspect offensive line at risk with a running back dancing around behind them. Barkley is a big-play threat but he needs to reach the second level faster in order to start breaking some off.
Dirty runs of five yards are fine, but averaging 3.4 yards per carry in today’s NFL while serving as the focal point of a struggling offense is not.