Pat Leonard: Super Bowl week a critical one for Saquon Barkley negotiations

This week feels like a big one in the Giants’ Saquon Barkley contract negotiations.

GM Joe Schoen and Barkley’s agents are planning to reconvene a third time.

They talked during their November bye week and couldn’t reach a deal. They revisited the topic early this past week and still didn’t find a compromise.

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Now they’re planning to continue conversations this week coming off Schoen’s trip to the Senior Bowl in Mobile, Ala., and Barkley’s appearance at the Pro Bowl Games in Las Vegas.

But it’s already Super Bowl week when Barkley presumably will make a public appearance and maybe pop up in Phoenix before Eagles-Chiefs.

It’s already the third time Schoen and Barkley’s camp have engaged.

And if Barkley’s people still think $12 million a year isn’t enough — as they did in November — it is hard to envision the sides making progress toward a long-term solution.

Then the Daniel Jones negotiations presumably will be nearing a start, if they haven’t already at that time. The franchise tag window will open on Feb. 21.

And the Giants will have to protect one of those two players with the tag by March 7 if they haven’t reached agreements with both.

Tagging a player, even if it’s only temporary, commits the salary cap hit to that player as long as he’s under the tag. Jones’ tag would cost $32.4 million. Barkley’s would cost $10 million.

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The math isn’t difficult to do.

The tag is leverage for Jones, because committing that much money to him would hamstring the Giants in free agency, using most of their $44.2 million projected cap space, per Overthecap.com.

But the tag exists as more of a threat to Barkley. That $10 million is lower than the annual value of a multi-year contract he already turned down/

It’s also not much higher than Barkley’s $7.2 million 2022 cap hit and therefore wouldn’t alter the team’s other spending plans much.

To be continued, sooner than later.

The Indianapolis Colts and Arizona Cardinals still have to hire a head coach to fill out this year’s cycle. The Cardinals are at risk of hosting a Super Bowl without a head coach if they don’t make a hire soon.

Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo and Giants offensive coordinator Mike Kafka are two candidates who seem to have a shot at the job.

Meanwhile, to some in the NFL, it feels like the Colts have their confusing search “narrowed down to a thousand suspects,” to quote the 1997 thriller L.A. Confidential. Eight or nine second-round interviews? A third round possibly in the works? Giants defensive coordinator Wink Martindale is one of the frontrunners for that vacancy, a source told the Daily News. But Indy needs to make a decision.

The NFL revealed on a Friday conference call that concussions were up 18% in the 2022 regular season (149 total) compared to the previous year (126). The league said 60% of that increase occurred on concussions to quarterbacks and to special teamers. Undoubtedly, the league’s increased attention to this issue after the mishandling of Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa’s early-concussion resulted in the “more cautious and conservative” approach and enhanced vigilance that Dr. Allen Sills described.

Mitigation measures on the horizon include a “quarterback-specific helmet” that is “close,” within a year or two, possible increased use of Guardian caps in the preseason, and conversations about how to make punt plays safer — similar to previous years’ rule changes on kickoffs — are on the table.

Player preseason lower-extremity injuries dropped 25% with new imposed limitations on player work during an “acclimation period” at the start of training camps. However, Sills said lower-extremity injuries in the first five weeks of the regular season were “up.” And oddly, neither Sills nor the league would share the specific data on just how much those injuries had increased.

Sills said the NFL needs to “do more work” to figure out why, but coaches will tell you it’s not that complicated: less work at the start of training camp has players’ bodies less prepared for real football. Indeed, Sills postulated that “participation in football at game speed may have some protective effects in that early regular season block.”

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The Giants noticeably had a ton of coaches at the Senior Bowl even though most teams barely sent any coaches at all. It wasn’t just Brian Daboll and coordinators Martindale and Kafka, either. DBs coach Jerome Henderson and LBs coach John Egorugwu also were there. Schoen explained why having them there to interview players face to face – and see them play in person — was so important: “If I can get Dabes and Kafka and Wink in front of 50-55 prospects here, 45 at the combine, then doing the 30 visits [to the team facilities], by the end of it, the head coach has had exposure to basically our whole draft board. I think when you’re aligned, the personnel and coaching staff on players, those are the best decisions you’re gonna make.”

Schoen said he alternated his attention on different days in Mobile to make sure he zeroed in on all positions. “I’m gonna try to look at everybody,” he said. “[Tues]day I was on wide receivers, quarterbacks, running backs, DBs. Maybe [Wednesday] it’s O-line, D-line and then some targeted players or players I watched film on and haven’t seen physically. You just gotta focus on a couple guys during the day that you’re interested in and get a good feel for them.”

Senior Bowl player interviews were on Monday and Thursday nights from 6:45 p.m. to 11 p.m. The Giants got four prospects at a time for 15 minutes and had both coaches and scouts pick their brains on everything from football knowledge (coaches) to their families and backgrounds (scouts)

Tulane RB Tyjae Spears (5-9, 204), ranked as The Athletic’s No. 9 running back in this class, was voted Senior Bowl practice player of the week by NFL GMs and scouts. At corner, Miami’s physical Tyrique Stevenson, Kansas State’s long Julius Brents and Iowa’s competitive Riley Moss turned some heads. And some defensive coordinator is going to fall in love with Texas linebacker Demarvion Overshown, a 6-2, 220-pound specimen who can drop in coverage.

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“He’s in for a free ride right now. You guys can coach this team.” — Giants free agent safety Julian Love, on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football, about Eagles coach Nick Sirianni