Who Is Saquon Barkley, Giants' Pick?

Saquon Barkley, the Penn State running back selected by the Giants with the second pick overall, was born in the Bronx. 

Barkley, who many football experts consider the best running back to enter the NFL since Adrian Peterson came out of Oklahoma in 2007, grew up rooting for the Jets and his favorite player, Curtis Martin, ESPN.com reports. His family moved to an Allentown, Pennsylvania, suburb in 2001.

In an interview with Bleacher Report last August, Barkley's mother, Tonya Johnson, said she decided to move the family when the block they lived on, Lyman Place, "started deteriorating more and more. And more." 

But Barkley recalled a fun and joyful childhood there. 

"I didn't think it was a rough neighborhood," he said. "You're a kid. You're just having fun." 

"I don't think any place is truly that bad. It's the stories you hear about it [that make it seem that way]. I just grew up being a little kid having fun."

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His mother gave birth to him at age 16; his father was "a normal kid in the streets of New York, doing dumb stuff."

His father, Alibay Barkley, spent a year in Rikers Island for a gun charge, and then got caught up in a drug habit, according to The Morning Call, a Lehigh-area newspaper. That's when Johnson decided to move the family from the Bronx to Pennsylvania, with or without their father.

"For my kids, it was so they could run around and enjoy the air, enjoy the freedom and not have to worry about sitting in a park and seeing a shootout," Johnson told The Morning Call. "I told him, 'I'm leaving. You can either follow or not.' He was not doing well, so he chose to follow.

"I think it was the best decision I've ever made, for myself, my children and my husband. Who knows what would have happened?"

Barkley just welcomed his first child, daughter Jada Clare on Tuesday. He wrote on Instagram: "I pray that I can be the best father to you and help you grow into an amazing woman." 

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