Are you familiar with that new sleep aid commercial featuring Saquon Barkley playfully taking jabs at the Giants for letting him go and resurfacing co-owner John Mara’s line about not being able to sleep at night if Barkley signed with the Eagles?
Mara clearly has seen it and he feigned anger about it on Monday, the day he announced that general manager Joe Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll will return in 2025 after a 3-14 season.
Mara said he called Barkley to complain.
“The least you could’ve done was ask me to be in the commercial with you,” Mara said he told Barkley. “I could’ve been tossing and turning, and it would’ve been great. There is an acting gene in our family, you know. It’s not just my nieces.”
Mara was referring to his nieces, Kate and Rooney Mara, both accomplished actresses.
Barkley after six years with the Giants could not come to a contract agreement with the team that made him the No. 2 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft and flew the coop to the rival Eagles on a three-year, $37.75 million deal.
That looks like a steal after Barkley put in an MVP-type season, rushing for a career-high and NFL-leading 2,005 yards despite sitting out the final game against the Giants in Week 18.
Barkley finished 100 yards shy of Eric Dickerson’s single-season NFL record of 2,105 yards, accomplished in 1984.
Barkley, in a commercial for Unisom, says: “I heard some of you were having trouble sleeping, so I wrote you a lullaby: Rock-a-bye baby awake in your bed, as the thought of 2,000 swirls in your head. It sure is tough to lose sleep over football; not for me, though. Goodnight to you all.”
That was a shot at Mara on HBO’s “Hard Knocks’’ admitting to Schoen: “I’m going to have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia.”
Offensive coordinator Mike Kafka will interview for the Bears head coaching position, according to NFL Network.
The Giants last year blocked interview requests for Kafka for offensive coordinator jobs.
Kafka called the plays on offense in 2022 and 2023 but was stripped of that assignment this season, with Daboll taking over.
Last year, Daboll opted to have players meet with their position coaches on an optional basis.
There were no individual meetings between Daboll and players.
This year there were those individual meetings.
“I thought it was the right thing to do,’’ Daboll said. “We did it the first year, too. We thought something else would be a little bit better.’’
Of course, the day after the 2023 season, Daboll was a bit preoccupied.
He went through an angry meeting with defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, leading to Martindale leaving the team.
