Seeing behind the scenes of how general managers and NFL executives work through the challenging free agency frenzy has been one of the reasons why HBO's "Hard Knocks" offseason edition with the New York Giants has been such a major hit.
Over the first few episodes we've seen how tiring the process was on Giants general manager Joe Schoen and owner John Mara, especially when it came to trying to keep star running back Saquon Barkley in New York.
The Giants knew from the beginning that their biggest threat will be one of their divisional rivals, and the team Barkley eventually signed with, the Philadelphia Eagles. However, in this week's episode, we learned another team was also in the mix.
That team was the Chicago Bears, who quietly kept tabs on multiple top running backs on the free agent market. During the episode, Schoen got a text from a source claiming that it was the Bears who were driving up the price on Barkley. Here's the clip from Tuesday's episode .
In hindsight, this should come as no surprise. The Bears had plenty of money to spend in free agency and clearly wanted to go big game hunting with their available cap. Once it became clear that the Eagles were the front runners to land Barkley, the team pivoted to the Eagles former starting back D'Andre Swift .
Both backs are dynamic, but different players, that each could have filled the role that head coach Matt Eberflus was looking to add to the team's new offense.
"We really needed that guy that can really operate on third down and even on first and second down, be a weapon in the deep part of the field and the short part of the field, and being able to take it the distance," he explained . "[Swift's] got a lot of gas."
Looking back on it, the thought of adding a high-caliber running back like Barkley to the offense would have been incredibly exciting, but that's how the Bears also view Swift's potential and why they paid him top dollar to come to Chicago.
At the end of the day, everything worked out great for the Eagles and Bears, each landing new top running backs during the first minutes of free agency. As for the Giants after letting their star play-maker fall through their hands, they waited out the frenzy and eventually signed Devin Singletary to lead their backfield.
We'll really get to see how everything will work out for all three teams when the season rolls around. But still, it's nice to see that general manager Ryan Poles wasn't afraid to roll up his sleeves and start a bidding war for one of the top free agents available on the market.
Related: Giants 'Hard Knocks' debut shows how close the team was to going after the Chicago Bears top free agent signing
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