PHOENIX — Pat Shurmur stopped just short of impersonating Oprah Winfrey as he previewed an Odell Beckham-less Giants offense.

The Giants coach and offensive play-caller didn’t shout, “You get more touches. You get more touches. Everybody. Gets. More. Touches!"

But Shurmur made it clear the plan is to spread around the touches — mostly receptions — that used to go to Beckham before he was traded to the Browns.

“You try to get the most out of the players that you have and use their skill sets,” Shurmur said at the NFL Annual Meeting. “I really do believe it takes a village to spread the ball around. We have a lot of fine players on offense. We’ll just spread the ball.”

Logic dictates a chunk of Beckham’s 124 targets and 77 catches in 12 games will be redirected to the team’s new best player: Running back Saquon Barkley. Except Barkley already had the second-most touches in the NFL with 352 (261 carries and 91 catches) as a rookie.

Can he really withstand a heavier workload?

“We don’t track that,” Shurmur said of ball distribution within the team. “Certainly it’s a good thing when he touches the ball. In games where you look at the stat sheet and six or seven guys touched the ball, I think that’s the way you want to play offense."

The Giants signed Golden Tate, who has averaged 89 catches over the last five seasons with mostly the Lions and eight games of the Eagles.

Sterling Shepard set career highs of 66 catches and 872 yards last season. Evan Engram was most productive last season in the four games Beckham missed due to injury, though it also coincided with Engram’s own return to health.

The Giants have six other returning wide receivers who combined for 36 catches last season, including re-signed free agents Cody Latimer and Bennie Fowler. They signed veteran Brittan Golden to a futures contract.

Whose job is it to get more players involved? Quarterback Eli Manning used Beckham and his catch-and-run ability as a safety valve.

“It’s everybody’s,” Shurmur said. “When you release everybody down the field, we have progressions. If they cover you, you move on to the next guy. There are times I have an idea I want to throw it to you and you’re covered so let me throw it over here.”

The primary reason skeptics of drafting Barkley with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2018 draft referred to data about the wear-and-tear absorbed by top running backs leading to a shorter career length as well as the success had by mid- and low-round draft picks.

For example, Hall of Famer Terrell Davis retired after seven seasons with only four over 1,000 rushing yards.

If the Giants are going to build an offense by increasing Barkley’s touches, they risk running out his prime before the rest of the team is ready to compete with Manning’s eventual successor.

The Giants scored two of their three-highest scoring outputs and three of their top eight in the games without Beckham. They averaged 18.7 points in their first eight games and 27.3 in their final eight games, improving from 1-7 to 5-11.

Especially as the Giants near the end of Manning’s career, it’s clearly Barkley’s offense now. He ranked No. 2 in the NFL in rushing yards and first in yards from scrimmage as a rookie.

“I don’t think of it that way,” Shurmur said. “We have an outstanding running back who is going to get his touches, and we’re going to build an offense to score more points, more like we did at the end of (last) year than we did at the beginning.”

Ryan Dunleavy may be reached at rdunleavy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @rydunleavy. Find our Giants coverage on Facebook.