This ugly era of Giants football must be hurting Bill Belichick.
The longtime Patriots coach, who took on a bunch of media gigs this season after not getting a coaching job following his split from Robert Kraft, has long revered the Giants, with whom he was an assistant and coordinator from 1979-90, winning two Super Bowls.
But he did not hold back in his assessment of the Giants Monday in his weekly appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show,” taking shots at the Andrew Thomas-less offensive line after Saquon Barkley returned to MetLife Stadium on Sunday and ran roughshod over his former team as Big Blue got crushed 28-3 by the Eagles.
“The Giants thing I don’t really understand. [Barkley] was their best player,” Belichick said. “For a couple million dollars more they could have kept him, I guess. Instead, they got a guard or somebody, I don’t know. The offensive line doesn’t look very good.
“I mean look, they’re playing a guy at left tackle [Josh Ezeudu] who shouldn’t be playing left tackle. Evan Neal was drafted in the first round, he doesn’t play. They have some [free-agent] guards [Jon Runyan, Greg Van Roten] that are pretty suspect. It’s a tough line. And honestly, I thought that the quarterback [Daniel Jones] is trying to hang in there. It’s just been tough sledding.”
After playing his final season with the Giants on the franchise tag, Barkley, 27, signed a three-year, $37.75 million contract with Philadelphia, including $26 million guaranteed. He ran 17 times for 176 yards and a touchdown on Sunday.
Barkley’s contract drama was a major focal point of the first offseason “Hard Knocks” on HBO which featured a look at the Giants’ front office. It included GM Joe Schoen speaking with Barkley on the phone and asking the running back to come back to him after testing the open market.
“In ‘Hard Knocks’ it looked like — I don’t think [head coach Brian] Daboll wanted to get rid of Saquon, and I certainly don’t think [owner] John Mara wanted to get rid of Saquon. It just seemed like kind of a general manager thing of, ‘Oh, we don’t think anybody will pay him,’ when kind of everybody in the league knew that he was gonna go to the Eagles,” Belichick said.
“But I don’t think everybody was on the same page on that. At least it didn’t appear that way from ‘Hard Knocks’, which honestly I’m surprised they even let that air with that kind of tone being on it.”
Belichick, 72, also appears weekly on “Inside the NFL” and the “Let’s Go!” podcast, and also appears on ESPN’s “ManningCast” and an Underdog Fantasy show.