Giants coach Joe Judge defends playing limited Daniel Jones vs. Cardinals

One day after the New York Giants lost convincingly to the Arizona Cardinals, 27-6, coach Joe Judge said there were “no regrets, no second guessing” about playing a hobbled Daniel Jones for most of the game.

Jones was sacked six times in 27 drop backs Sunday and did not run the ball a single time, the first game in his NFL career where he has not rushed the ball at least once. he was obviously unwilling or unable to try and escape the pocket to any real degree.

“The way he moved in the game is what we expected,” Judge said. “We knew that there were things that were going to come up in the game, some limitations he was going to have throughout the game. We were willing to live with those.

“What we expected to see we pretty much saw.”

Jones was limping significantly near the end of the game. Judge said that Jones, who came out of the game in favor of Colt McCoy for the Giants’ final offensive series, had “bumps and bruises” from the game, but did not aggravate the hamstring injury.

“We didn’t do anything that aggravated that leg injury,” Judge said. “There was probably a little bit of wear and tear as the game went on. He took some hits in the pocket yesterday, I think that’s just kind of natural, any quarterback getting up is going to have a little bit of wear and tear on him.”

Judge did admit some of the six sacks Jones endured Sunday were because Jones was limited in his ability to move around.

“There were some situations where it just came down to they were good in coverage, we blocked for a long time and Daniel wasn’t going to pull the ball and run in some of those circumstances,” Judge said. “Call ‘em coverage sacks if you want to call them that.”

Asked if Jones had X-rays for any injuries in addition to the hamstring, Judge said only that Jones had “no broken bones.”

Judge said he would play Jones against the Cleveland Browns this coming Sunday night if he shows the same amount of mobility and health during practice this week.

“If Daniel’s healthy to play and he looked the way he did in practice last week I’d have no hesitation playing Daniel at all,” Judge said. “We made a calculation, this has nothing to do with Colt, but there’s also a commitment we’ve made to Daniel as our quarterback and how we’re running this offense ... if he’s healthy enough to go out there and protect himself and we don’t feel he’s putting himself in greater danger to be injured worse and he’s going to give the team a competitive advantage of going out there then we’re going to play him. And we have no hesitation it it.”