Darius Slay wants to know how Giants owner John Mara is sleeping after letting Saquon Barkley go
Mara admitted on “Hard Knocks” this summer that he’d have a tough time sleeping if the Eagles signed Barkley.
Saquon Barkley went into MetLife Stadium, his former home of six years, and silenced the crowd in the Eagles’ 28-3 blowout win over the New York Giants. The running back fell just short of his career high of 189 rushing yards set against Washington in 2019, but did finish with a season-high 176 yards on 17 carries and scored a touchdown.
After the Giants let Barkley hit free agency, owner John Mara admitted he wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of their former franchise running back joining a division rival, the Eagles. On the third episode of the first offseason edition of HBO’s Hard Knocks, Mara and general manager Joe Schoen discussed Barkley potentially drawing interest from Philadelphia.
“I’ll have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia, I’ll tell you that,” Mara said. “I’ve been around enough players, he’s the most popular player we have by far.”
Of course, the Giants indeed let Barkley go after allowing him to test the free agent waters, a decision that the running back called “disrespectful” and “a slap in the face” on a podcast earlier this year.
After Barkley’s dominant performance, Eagles cornerback Darius Slay had his own question for the Giants owner Mara.
» READ MORE: Saquon Barkley torches the Giants after seeing his jersey in flames; is it time the Eagles ignite the run game?
“There’s one more thing I forgot to mention y’all,” Slay said on this week’s edition of The Big Play Slay podcast. “There’s one more thing. I got to get this because it’s funny. It’s funny, because it’s like, John Mara, the president of the Giants, on Hard Knocks, he said, ‘I would have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philly.’ Like, I just need to interview him right now, today or maybe tomorrow, and ask him how did you sleep? You know what I’m saying? How did you sleep? Was you tossing and turning, you know? Or did you sleep standing up?
“I don’t know, because to let that walk out my building and then him coming into my building and rush for 100-something-plus yards, 170-plus yards. It would be hard for me to sleep too. So, I might have to sleep [expletive] standing up. You know what I’m saying, and then … have somebody catch me whenever I [expletive] fall. So, hey, we appreciate you. Thank you once again for letting that man come over here to Philadelphia, because Philly is definitely going to love him.”