Rich: The Giants Should Trade for Jonathan Taylor & the Eagles Should Deal Saquon Barkley

The NFC East has flipped upside down, and Rich knows exactly what the team sitting on top should do about it. "I know what the Giants should do right now," he said on The Rich Eisen Show.

"Call the Colts," came the answer from across the table. Rich agreed: "1,000 percent."

Start with the standings. The Giants are 4-2-1. The Cowboys are 3-5. The Commanders are 2-4-1. And the Eagles are 2-6. "They're done," Rich said. "They are done, and they're not used to being done through eight weeks, and it's a very difficult thing for them to wrap their head around."

Rich laid out Philadelphia's situation bluntly. The MVP quarterback is not coming back this year, and Tanner McKee was supposed to be the next Nick Foles walking through the door to save the season. Nick Sirianni has pointed to 2021, when the Eagles finished strong, as the template, and said he believes in the guys in the locker room. Rich noted this is not a franchise used to looking at a trade deadline at 2-6 and deciding to sell, though knowing Howie Roseman, "he might acquire somebody for the future because that's the way he works."

Sirianni was also asked about Sean Mannion's play calling, a subject Rich said Philadelphia can't seem to quit, and he deflected. "I'm not thinking about any of that stuff right now," Sirianni said. "I got a bunch of guys in that locker room that are hurting." He added that he has "a lot of faith" in everybody in that locker room, including the coaches.

What's also in that locker room is Saquon Barkley, and Rich has noticed a pattern. Barkley "comes on like a house of fire" in the first half, then fades in the third and fourth quarters. Rich wondered aloud whether he's on a pitch count with his hamstring or his back, and it was noted on set that Barkley was stretching constantly throughout the game.

Barkley, for his part, doesn't want to go anywhere. "I would love to be here. I plan on being here," he said. "I'm not one of those guys that's like, oh, the season's not going the way we're going, let's just jump ship. That's not the type of personality I have." He said he hopes to be "one of the reasons why we fix it."

Kudos to him, Rich said, but the math is the math. The division is gone for Philadelphia, and nobody at the table saw the Eagles winning eight or nine more games to reach 10 or 11 wins.

Now flip to the Giants. "What a bye week for them," Rich said. They watched Dallas "soil the bed" and watched Washington knock Philadelphia down to the point of considering future assets. Now the Giants come off the bye feeling great about J.J. McCarthy, with a five-day stretch wrapped around the trade deadline where they can take full control of the division.

That's where Jonathan Taylor comes in. Rich called him "the kid from New Jersey" and "absolutely what the Giants could use." He loves Cam Skattebo, and is fine turning him loose 15 times a game. But a 25-to-30 touch back? That's Taylor.

And there's a redemption angle. "You screwed up the Saquon thing so royally that you have a chance to do it again with somebody like him," Rich said. "Great on the field, great off the field, great in the community, just great overall." Back then, the Giants were asking whether they had the right quarterback and how far away they were. Not anymore.

"You go for it right now in John Harbaugh's first year," Rich said. "You give JJ what he needs and you go to work and deal with the quarterback thing down the road. You're ready now in a way that you thought you weren't for Saquon. Do it."

His closing argument came straight from The Godfather Part II and Frank Pentangeli: do it now, before you go into Philadelphia and take on Washington, and take the division by storm.