The New York Giants held out the majority of their starters in Saturday’s 12-7 loss to the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium in an effort to protect them from unnecessary injury. Being the first preseason game of the year in a new era where the strategy has changed due to the shortened run up to the season, they appeared to be doing the right thing.
The game was meaningless in the grand scheme of things and with rosters due to be reduced to 85 players this week, the team actually needed to get a longer look at some their backups.
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There were some injuries during the game to report, however. Tight end Cole Hikutuni left the game with a hip injury and offensive lineman Kyle Murphy was carted off with an ankle injury and did not return. Linebacker T.J. Brunson also got banged up during the game and had to be attained to by the medical team.
“Hopefully Kyle and some of the other guys that left the game, hopefully it’s not too serious and we can get these guys back out there,” head coach Joe Judge said after the game. “They’re all working really hard for us and doing a good job. You hate to see a guy like Kyle or a guy like TJ or Cole have to leave the game with some kind of an injury. It’s unfortunate. Sometimes that’s the nature of the game. You don’t wanna see any player on either team get hurt. You always want every team to come out completely healthy, so we’ll find out what that is. And, again, we’re hoping for the best and we’ll get these guys as well as we can as fast we can.”
Rookie wide receiver Kadarius Toney was ruled out before the game with an unspecified injury. He was snot seen on the field during warmups.
“Any injured player who was not going to be able to play in the game tonight, we didn’t put on the sideline,” Judge said. “Everyone who was on the sideline would have been healthy enough to participate in the game. The only exception would be Saquon (Barkley) and if it’s a captain, there’s a different deal. Sometimes, we’ll let them on the field.”
When pressed about Toney’s injury, Judge offered little detail.
“I’m not gonna disclose any person’s individual injury at this moment, but we hope to get him out there this week…he’s been dealing with it for a little bit. Something was aggravated in practice towards the tail end of this week, so he was unable to play tonight.”
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