PHILADELPHIA — John Mara’s worst nightmare stood in front of his stall inside the Eagles locker room in advance of Sunday’s game against his former team and was asked, “What does this game mean to you?’’
“I don’t know,’’ Saquon Barkley said. “I’m still processing that. Obviously, there is some history there, for sure. Especially going back there, it will be interesting. I don’t have an exact answer … [but] I do know my mindset [is] that I don’t have to prove anything to them.’’
Them.
The Giants are them.
Mara is the owner of them and famously was recorded on camera in HBO’s “Hard Knocks’’ saying, “I’ll have a hard time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia.’’
Barkley was selected second overall in the 2018 NFL Draft by them, played six seasons with them and signed with Philadelphia this offseason after the Giants didn’t offer him a contract he felt was fair.
You know the history: Then-general manager Dave Gettleman said Barkley was “touched by the hand of God’’ and that he pictured him one day “putting on a gold jacket’’ as he’s inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In his six seasons with the Giants, Barkley rushed for 5,211 yards and 35 touchdowns. Not Hall of Fame numbers, but certainly exemplary.
What unfortunately wasn’t exemplary during his tenure with the team was the Giants’ record: 34-64 with only one playoff berth.
At the end of the day, for as popular as Barkley was representing himself with class and grace as the face of the franchise, he wasn’t enough of a difference-maker in the win-loss columns. So, the Giants made a business decision the same way Barkley did.
The romantics among us — John Mara at the head of the pack — wanted Barkley to remain a Giant for life.
“Me and John … Mr. Mara … we have a great relationship,’’ Barkley told The Post. “But I haven’t talked to him since I left.’’
Sunday at MetLife Stadium between the 2-4 Mara Giants and the 3-2 Barkley Eagles will be overflowing with emotions. Some warm and some bitter.
“It’s no hate over there,” Barkley said. “Whether I go and have 300 yards or if I have 10 yards, as long as we win, I don’t really have that big of a pride or ego that if I go out there and ball, I’m looking at those guys over like, ‘Look at what you guys let go.’ ’’
Many of Barkley’s Eagles teammates, however, do wonder how the Giants ever let him go.
“I was shocked that we got him,’’ Eagles right tackle Lane Johnson said.
“I don’t know what they didn’t see, but he’s still got it,’’ Eagles linebacker Brandon Graham said. “He’s a home-run hitter, man.’’
Barkley enters the game averaging 114.8 yards from scrimmage per game this season, which is fourth in the league. He’s rushed for 482 yards and scored five TDs.
Barkley won’t say it, but we will: He’s jumping out of his skin for the chance to run wild on his former team Sunday.
“I know not to make the game more than what it is,’’ he insisted, recalling doing exactly that in his first game back after tearing his ACL in 2020 and rushing for 26 yards on 10 carries.
“I was out there trying to prove everyone wrong,’’ he said, referring to the doubters who didn’t believe he’d be the same player post-surgery. “I kind of wanted that, like ‘eff you’ moment.’’
Barkley conceded that got the best of him that day and backfired.
Eagles backup center Nick Gates, who was a Giants teammate of Barkley’s, told The Post, “It’s going to be pretty crazy at [MetLife Stadium] with him having played his whole career there. I hope the fans cheer for him. He deserves it.’’
Eagles receiver Parris Campbell, who played with Barkley last season with the Giants, said he and Barkley talked earlier in this week about what it’ll be like Sunday.
“He’s not the type of guy that’ll tell you that, but deep down inside, that’s a place that he played for six years, so there’s gonna be some emotional ties to it,’’ Campbell said.
Barkley said he speaks to Giants quarterback Daniel Jones “every week, but not this week,’’ adding that he’s got so many close friends on his former team that “there’s some guys there that I’ll have in my wedding.’’
Barkley and the Giants were thought to be a marriage made in heaven, one that would last forever, lead to many wins and maybe even that gold jacket Gettleman predicted.
Now, Barkley, having traded blue for green, looms as a figure who may deliver a debilitating blow to a Giants season already on the brink of a wrong-way spiral.
And with that, leave John Mara tossing and turning under the covers suspended in an indefinite state of insomnia.
Emotional indeed.