NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Brian Daboll put up two fingers and gave Saquon Barkley that look. The Giants needed one to tie, two to win, and so the rookie coach locked eyes with the star running back, and nothing else really needed to be said. 

“F-yeah,” Barkley thought to himself. 

So he took the strange underhand pass from Daniel Jones, and negotiated his way through the Titans and into the end zone, giving the Giants the cushion they needed to survive a last-second Tennessee kick that sailed wide left. 

“I trust Saquon,” Daboll said later. 

He trusted him with a lifetime gamble in his very first game as an NFL head coach. 

A star was reborn in Nashville, oh yes he was. His name is Saquon Barkley. You remember him, right? 

The Penn State wunderkind who was “touched by the hand of God.” The guy who could have been scouted by Dave Gettleman’s mother. 

The guy who had the skill, the look, and the charisma to be the biggest football star in New York since Joe Willie Namath. 

That Saquon Barkley returned to the NFL on Sunday with the loudest of bangs, rushing for 164 yards on 18 carries, scoring a touchdown, changing the game with a 68-yard third-quarter run, and carrying the Giants when it was needed most. 

“We got the best back in the league, and he showed it today,” said Sterling Shepard, who caught a 65-yard touchdown pass from Jones. “There’s nothing else to be said. 

“I love the way he’s been running the ball in practice, and he brought it straight to the game field. I’m so proud of him because he’s been working his ass off. He deserves everything, and I can’t wait to see him the rest of the season. This is a great start for him.” 

A great start for the New York Football Giants, coming straight out of left field. 

“You saw the explosiveness,” Jones said of his friend Barkley, “and it was fun to watch him.” As bold a call as Daboll made to decide the game, that two-point conversion play wasn’t exactly a tap-in birdie putt. 

“Luckily when you have Saquon Barkley,” Jones said, “it works out.” 

Barkley outplayed the great Derrick Henry, in a landslide. He was supposed to be the kind of star that Henry has been for the Titans, at least until his injuries, his underwhelming teammates, and his own non-performance conspired against the cause. 

“I’m ready to go crazy,” Barkley had pledged on a podcast. He said he was motivated to shut everyone up. 

Barkley did just that with a purposeful north-south running style and no east-west dance steps in sight. 

“I kind of started to get into the zone,” he said of his feeling after his 68-yard dash down the left sideline in the third quarter. “Started locking in. I love being in that place.” 

The Giants are a much better team with Barkley in that place. This opener at Tennessee always promised to be a painful indoctrination for Daboll, whose former co-worker in New England, Mike Vrabel, had built the kind of consistent postseason program the Giants can only dream of being. 

That’s exactly the way it played out from the jump, when the Giants started with a three-and-out ripped straight from their worst nightmares — A 1-yard Barkley run, followed by two Jones runs ended by hard hits on the exposed quarterback. 

That was a virtual springtime walk in the park compared to the 46-yard punt return the Giants immediately surrendered, followed by the Titans’ absurdly easy 45-yard touchdown drive. 

Man, it looked bleak at that point. Giants Twitter was all doom and gloom, and the press box veterans here in the Titans’ house were preparing their advance obits. 

But then Barkley started cutting loose, and everything changed. If he is going to be this kind of player in 2022, the Giants will remain relevant longer than a lot of people thought.