Saquon Barkley, Giants leaders need to meet challenge in playoff-type clash with Commanders

The Giants play their biggest game in years on Sunday, and Odell Beckham Jr. is not riding in on a white stallion to save them, if he even signs here at all.

Despite a week of OBJ headlines and a high-profile visit with ownership and Giant brass, Sunday’s 1 p.m. kickoff with the Washington Commanders at MetLife Stadium will be up to this team’s leaders on the field.

That means the captains. That means Daniel Jones, Saquon Barkley, Dexter Lawrence, Andrew Thomas, Leonard Williams, Julian Love. All of them.

“The reality is if you have a ‘C’ on your chest, you gotta play the best,” Love, the defense’s play-caller and leading tackler, told the Daily News on the “Talkin’ Ball with Pat Leonard” podcast. “If your captains and your leaders aren’t playing well, then you don’t have a shot.”

Not that the captains haven’t approached the entire season this same way. Sunday’s stakes are just more urgent.

Washington (7-5) has won six of its last seven. The Giants (7-4) have lost three of their last four. And Ron Rivera’s Commanders are two-point road favorites in this NFC East.

The Giants, Commanders and Seahawks likely are playing for the final two playoff spots in the NFC during the regular season’s final six weeks. There is a good chance that nine wins would get the Giants in, but they have the hardest remaining schedule in the league: the Commanders twice, the Eagles twice, the Vikings on the road and the Colts at home.

Barkley also has stalled out after being one of the NFL’s top offensive players in the season’s first half. If he’s not going, this can’t happen. And he knows it.

“It starts with me,” Barkley said of the Giants’ stagnant running game. “[I have to] continue to trust the system, make sure I’m in good relationships with the linemen, and stick with the run. That’s the way we won games this year.”

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Barkley pointed out that just because defenses are keying on him doesn’t mean the Giants shouldn’t be able to run it. They were imposing their will early in the year. Why not now?

“There have been teams prior to the last two weeks that came in and that was their focal point, and we were able to still get the run game going and lean on it,” he said. “We’ve just got to get back to that, and everyone needs to make plays when the plays need to be made. And it starts with me.”

The onus is on Jones, too, even with top wideout Darius Slayton sick and less than 100% leading a decimated receiving corps. Jones needs to use his legs in this game.

He rushed the ball a season-low three times in the Thanksgiving Day loss to the Dallas Cowboys. And while Jones and the coaches said defenses are taking the QB run away and Jones is making the right reads, Brian Daboll and offensive coordinator Mike Kafka have to find a way to get Jones free.

“I expect us to respond well,” Jones said. “I expect us to play a really good game, play a clean game. I think our mindset is right, our approach is right. I think we’re all fired up, we’re all excited for the opportunity.”

Big picture, obviously, Jones and Barkley are still playing for their futures, for their next contracts, to prove they are worthy of being paid as franchise players. That means leading, winning and staying healthy.

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Although Barkley has spoken before about wanting to build a legacy as an all-time great, however, he rejected the suggestion that this game is that kind of defining stage.

“No,” he said. “It’s another game, to be completely honest. It’s a tough opponent who’s playing really well, who’s playing great football, is 6-1 in the last seven games, talented on all sides of the ball, all three phases. It’s going to be tough … Whatever I’m able to do, if it’s carry the ball however many times or if I got to be more of a decoy or better in pass pro — whatever I do, that’s one thing I’m going to do to just help my team win the football game.”

The Giants don’t need Barkley to be a role player, though. They need him to dominate. The same goes for edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux, even though he’s a rookie and not a captain.

A lot is expected of first-round picks. Thibodeaux has shown flashes this season and had his most active game on Thanksgiving at Dallas. But he hasn’t broken out yet.

“I feel like I’ve made a lot of big gains because I was kind of thrown into a position of leadership, as far as play call[s and] situations and being on the field and having to take on a big role on the field,” Thibodeaux said this week of his rookie season. “It was kind of a slow start for me… But now I feel like I’ve been able to put a lot of it together, and now I’ve been able with that last game to really put it together and play fast. I do, honestly, feel like that was my fastest game.”

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Outside linebackers coach Drew Wilkins said Thibodeaux already has shown a knack for rising to the big moment and understanding when he’s needed most, too.

“When you look at the Jacksonville game, some of his most explosive rushes were in the fourth quarter,” Wilkins said. “Obviously closing out the Baltimore game with the sack in the fourth quarter, and then as you continue to rush Dallas, he really locks in — and it was the same against Green Bay — in understanding the value of every one of those rushes.

“When you get into those two-minute situations, every rush and every play can really change the game,” Wilkins added. “And one great rush where you get the ball out or force a bad throw can decide the game. Kayvon understands the magnitude of that.”

The pressure is also on Daboll, the first-year head coach, to deliver a victory against a Washington staff that Daboll, Kafka and Wink Martindale should be able to outscheme.

Interestingly, Daboll, who has billed himself as Mr. Consistent approaching every game the same way, ratcheted up the stakes in his rhetoric this week to his team.

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“When you play meaningful games in December, I think that’s why we all do this,” Daboll said. “It’s not a lot of fun when you’re not playing meaningful games. So let’s come to work with a great attitude, a positive mindset. Keep getting better. And you focus on the week’s opponent: That’s how you have to do it. But they’re important games now.”

The Giants’ harsh reality, though, is while they are getting some players back, injuries have crushed them this season and will continue to thrust backups into prominent roles on Sunday.

Martindale, who has been coaching college football since 1986 and NFL football since 2004, said in mid-November that “I’ve never seen a roster move around the way this roster moved around with injuries and things like that.”

That’s all the more reason why Love said, when the captains met on Friday, they spoke about leading by example in everything they do on the field Sunday.

“As we get down into crunch time, with a lot of guys banged up, a lot of guys coming back and the roster in flux with people up and down, it’s crucial — and I talked about it today with our captains— that we not only show who we are on the field, motivate, play well, but we gotta bring energy and juice,” Love said. “We got a lot of guys who it might be their first time out there that are looking to us not just for how we’re playing but how our demeanor is when the bad plays happen, when the good plays happen.

Love said there can be “no getting down.”

“It’s only positive, it’s only motivation, it’s only being a competitor,” the fourth-year safety said. “As this stretch goes down to the wire these next six weeks, we gotta be resilient. There’s gonna be highs and lows. These teams are gonna make plays. But we’re gonna fight our ass off because we have been all year.”