Devin Singletary: Can Giants get enough from their new No. 26?

Saquon Barkley motored on down the road to Philadelphia in free agency, the New York Giants for two offseasons unwilling to give him the contract he thought he deserved. In his place as lead back with the Giants is Devin ‘Motor’ Singletary.

How will that work out for the Giants? Let’s discuss Singletary as we continue player-by-player profiles of the Giants’ 90-man roster.

The skinny

Height: 5-foot-7

Weight: 203

Opening day age: 27

Position: Running back

Experience: 5

Contract: Two years, $16.5 million | 2024 cap hit: $3.75 million | Fully guaranteed: $9.5 million

Career to date

Selected in the third round of the 2019 NFL Draft by the Buffalo Bills, Singletary has been a good player throughout his career. The lowest rushing total of his five-year career was 687 yards in 2020. He has rushed for more than 800 yards in each of the last three seasons.

Singletary played in 12 games with eight starts as a rookie with the Bills in 2019. He has been a full-time starter since.

Singletary has never shouldered the workload Barkley carried with the Giants when healthy. Singletary’s 246 touches in 2023 was a career-high. Barkley surpasses that number in four of his five full seasons, twice getting 352 touches.

Let’s compare Barkley and Singletary:

Age:
Singletary: 26 | Barkley: 27

Career yards per rushing attempt:
Singletary: 4.6 | Barkley: 4.3

Yards rushing per game:
Singletary: 51.9 | Barkley: 70.4

Yards per touch:
Singletary: 4.9 | Barkley: 4.9

1,000-yard rushing seasons:
Singletary: 0 in five years | Barkley: 3 in six years

Seasons with 1,000 total scrimmage yards:
Singletary: 3 (with a career-best of 1,099 yards) | Barkley 4 (with a 2,028-yard career-best and four seasons of 1,242 or more total yards)

Rushing success rate (per Pro Football Reference):
Singletary: 47.7% | Barkley: 42.5%

Take what you want from these numbers. The volume numbers favor Barkley. So do the breakaway numbers. The longest run of Singletary’s career is 51 yards. Barkley has had three runs of at least 68 yards. The efficiency numbers favor Singletary.

If you want to dive deeper into the numbers, go ahead. It will never be an apples-to-apples comparison because they played for different teams with different offensive lines. Singletary was a supporting player on good offenses with the Bills and Houston Texans. Barkley often was the offense in New York.

The point is that while Singletary isn’t Barkley he has been a good NFL running back. At 26 with far fewer touches than Barkley (1,489-1,063), Singletary should still be a good NFL running back.

While Barkley signed a three-year, $37.75 million deal with $26 million guaranteed, Singletary got two years, $16.5 million ($5.5 million guaranteed) from the Giants.

2024 outlook

Singletary, who will wear the No. 26 that used to belong to Barkley, was a natural fit as Barkley’s successor. He is a veteran player who is secure in what he can do, and he is familiar to head coach Brian Daboll and GM Joe Schoen after three years together with them in Buffalo.

“I’ve had familiarity with Devin. Devin has been a productive back when he was with me at Buffalo, he did a good job at Houston. Has some good leadership traits about him,” Daboll said during OTAs.

“He’s been in the league for a little bit here. He knows our system inside and out. He was in Houston for one year, but he’s very comfortable with how we do things.”

Singletary isn’t bothered by the perception of playing in Barkley’s shadow.

“Just ball out and win games. That’s the biggest thing,” Singletary said. “That’s our focus anyway: Win games. We aren’t really worried about the shadow of Saquon or none of that. It’s just finding ways to win games.”

Singletary should anchor the Giants’ running back room and be a good mentor for whichever young players from the group of Tyrone Tracy Jr., Eric Gray, Dante Miller, Jashaun Corbin, and Jacob Saylors make the roster.