New York Giants quarterback Daniel Jones missed practice on Wednesday after waking up more sore than the day prior — at least according to head coach Brian Daboll.
In contrast to Daboll’s comments, Jones said he was actually feeling better and has each day since sustaining a neck injury in Sunday’s loss to the Miami Dolphins.
Either way, Jones sat out and veteran backup Tyrod Taylor took the first-team reps. He is now preparing to start in Week 6 against the Buffalo Bills, his former team.
“My mindset each and every day is to come in and challenge myself to be better, lead, and when my opportunity is presented in front of me, to go out and make the best of it,” Taylor told reporters.
After Jones exited the game on Sunday, Taylor was thrust into action and immediately got a taste of what DJ had been dealing with this season. Taylor was running for his life and got a little banged up as well, having the wind knocked out of him at one point.
The poor offensive line play won’t force Taylor to change his approach, however. If he’s under center come Sunday night, he intends to “play free.”
“I think you play free,” Taylor said when asked how many hits he can take. “Obviously, it’s a contact sport that we play and a collision sport that we play. Playing scared is never a good thing. Obviously, as a quarterback, you want to limit the hits that you take on your body, but at the same time, you’ve got to do what’s best for the team in certain situations as far as fighting for extra yardage or making plays. Never playing timid, going out there and competing at a high level and dealing with what comes with that.”
Taylor recognizes that the poor pass protection has limited the offense through five weeks, but he refuses to pin all of the blame on the offensive line. If protection continues to break down, he feels that it’s up to him the skill position players to make things happen in different ways.
“Obviously, protection and being able to push the ball down the field, but yes, explosive plays can be created in different ways. We’ve had our opportunities throughout this year to be able to create explosive (plays), we just haven’t done a great job of executing,” he said. “You can name a number of different things. Obviously, as a team we know what we can do better. We’ve been working on trying to do better in those areas.”
If Wednesday’s injury report was any indication of what’s to come, we’ll see on Sunday if Taylor can make better chicken salad than Jones has so far this season.
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