Giants had ‘no regrets’ starting an injured Daniel Jones

New York Giants head coach Joe Judge said he had “no regrets” starting an injured Daniel Jones, who admitted he could not run.

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New York Giants head coach Joe Judge insists he put quarterback Daniel Jones (hamstring) through the ringer last week to ensure that he was healthy enough to start against the Arizona Cardinals.

Whatever that “ringer” consisted of clearly wasn’t enough because it was blatantly obvious that despite looking sound in practice, Jones was nowhere near 100 percent healthy on Sunday. Compounding matters, the second-year quarterback appeared to re-injure his hamstring and potentially suffered a back injury late in the game.

After the humiliating loss, Judge said he had no regrets about the decision to play Jones.

“No, I have no regrets on playing him. We made a calculated decision based on what he could do as a player. We went out there, and as a team, we have to execute better,” Judge told reporters.

Jones, meanwhile, was late to his Zoom call with local media because he likely needed substantial treatment after the game.

He, too, had no regrets about playing.

“I don’t regret it. I felt good enough to play, I felt like I could do everything I needed to do throughout the game. So no, I don’t have any regrets about that,” Jones said.

Unlike Judge however, Jones didn’t pretend to be in tip-top shape. In fact, he acknowledged that the hamstring altered his game and limited his ability to run, which is the most important element of his skill set.

“I think I wasn’t able to run like I normally do,” Jones said. “It wore on me a bit during the game.

“I wasn’t running like I’m used to. So that may have played into certain situations like that, but I think I need to do a better job getting the ball out of my hand and finding the open guy. I was holding the ball a little bit and that put a lot of pressure on those guys up front.”

If this same situation presents itself in Week 15 — and it will — then Jones can not play. It’s as simple as that.

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