Barkley played in 54 snaps in Sundays Week 1 loss to the Cowboys, but only had a chance at touching the ball 17 times or 31.4% of the snaps for which he was on the field, including 11 rushes and six pass targets, of which he caught four.The breakdown by down was as follows:
first down: 6 rushes, 3 pass targets;
second down 4 rushes, 2 pass targets;
third down: 1 rush, 1 pass target,
fourth down: no rushes or pass targets
Barkley was used in some capacity (run or pass) seven times up until 9:45 in the second quarter with the score 14-7 Dallas.
In the second half, the score now 21-7, he was used 10 times, starting with an 11-yard run starting at 12:19 in the third quarter.
This is obviously a one-game sample, so let's go back to Barkley's rookie season to get a better idea of his usage on downs.
In 844 snaps, Barkley had 261 rushing attempts and 121 pass targets of which he caught 91—that’s 45.2% of the snaps in which he played to get his hands on the ball.
Breaking that down by down distribution, we have the following:
first down: 157 rushes, 43 pass targets
second down: 86 rushes, 46 pass targets
third down: 17 rushes 32 pass targets,
fourth down: 1 rushing attempt, no pass targets
That looked like they were designed to get the ball to Barkley through the air, but Dallas was all over it. He’s going to draw a tremendous amount of attention so I understand Giants wanting to try to take advantage of teams cheating/overplaying him but they need to still find ways to get him the ball even if it’s just the old fashioned way.