Where will Saquon Barkley end up?

Saquon Barkley has faced a lot of obstacles throughout his NFL career. In 2020 Barkley suffered an ACL tear and MCL strain playing against the Chicago Bears. This injury sidelined him for the rest of the 2020 season. There were a lot of question marks surrounding Barkley. No one knew if he was gonna be able to return to his old self since this had been such a serious injury that Barkley had suffered several times. Safe to say Barkley’s career was resurrected by his tremendous play this past season. In his 2022 season with the New York Giants, he had over 1300 rushing yards and ten touchdowns. But with this being the final year of Barkley’s deal with the Giants, will the Giants look to re-sign him?

The New York Giants have some big decisions that have to be made this off-season. The two most important are surrounding their quarterback and running back. Going into this season, many people did not expect Daniel Jones to play at the level he did. In my opinion, Jones was not an elite quarterback by any means, but he was serviceable enough to get them into playoff contention with a weak supporting cast. I think a lot of New York’s success had to do with the head coach of the year Brian Daboll. With Daniel Jones set to be a free agent this off-season, he is asking for $45 million a year. And Saquon Barkley is asking for around $15 million a year. The Giants only have about $45 million in cap space; clearly, this is not enough to sign both players and other players to fill the roster.

With that being said, Barkley is likely to walk away from New York this off-season. The top four teams with the highest odds to sign Barkley are the Chicago Bears, Buffalo Bills, Denver Broncos, and Kansas City Chiefs. Out of these four teams, the Bears and Broncos are the only ones who aren’t in negative cap space. That is not to say that the Chiefs or Bills don’t make moves to free up space. But we can expect the Broncos and Bears to push harder for him if they are interested. 

Of those four teams, my two favorite spots for Barkley are the Chicago Bears and Buffalo Bills. With the Chicago Bears having nearly $100 million in cap space, they will be forced to spend big. So why not fill out that backfield with arguably the best-rushing quarterback in the league and a top-five running back this past season? But with the Chicago Bears having so many other holes to fill, I wouldn’t be surprised if they passed on Barkley. Seeing Fields and Barkley light it up from the ground would be a pretty awesome thing to see, though.

 As for the Buffalo Bills, it seems like their weak spot on offense has always been the running back position. Having Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs, and Saquon Barkley would be dangerous for opposing teams. Although I see Buffalo focusing more on their defensive needs, I would also love to see them make a push for Barkley as well. 

All in all, Saquon Barkley will end up somewhere. But I think the most important question is if Saquon Barkley will really get his $15 million a year and become the highest-paid running back in the NFL.