For three seasons, Saquon Barkley overcame bad offensive lines at Penn State and dazzled the country with ridiculous runs.
Now he’s with the NFL’s New York Giants — and another miserable offensive line — and the same question remains: Can he still be successful with bad blocking?
To answer that, we looked at past running backs in similar situations as Barkley. Specifically, we looked at starting rookies since 1997 who were drafted in the top 5 and played behind offensive lines ranked by Football Outsiders as one of the five worst run-blocking teams in the previous season.