It was probably easy to see coming, due to the way the New York Giants have handled other injuries this year, but Daniel Jones hasn’t yet been shut down by the team despite picking up a ankle injury in the late part of the season that will put him out with only four games to go.
Pat Shurmur has shown a stubborn insistence all year on keeping all of the team’s players on the field even when it might be better for the long term health of those players to not have them come back as soon as possible in largely meaningless games, and with the Giants sitting at two wins with four games to go, this might be the best example of one of those times.
“Oh sure, absolutely. I don’t know that. We’ll have to see. But I’m optimistic that he could,” Shurmur said when asked about whether or not Jones could return from the injury this season.
One would think that the Giants would simply allow Daniel Jones to ride the bench for the last games of the season while Eli Manning potentially closes out his career with one last run of starting games. But that would go against the coaching style of Shurmur, who also sent Saquon Barkley back out this season, despite the running back clearly looking still hurt in the first couple of games after his return from injury.
Shurmur even refused to rule out Jabrill Peppers, shortly after he picked up his recent spinal injury. That’s not counting Sterling Shepard taking the field again not long after his first concussion of the year and quickly picking up another concussion in the weeks following, which put him on the bench for longer.
It’s a continuing trend for the Giants to keep pushing their players even when there’s nothing at stake at this point and a legitimate risk is presented by continuing to keep these players on the field. It looks like a practice that might continue until it backfires with a player like Jones or Barkley actually getting hurt again because of it, or otherwise suffering in the long term.
Until something like that happens, though, fans can expect to maybe see a Daniel Jones comeback this year – even if it’s one that would be rushed for the end of the season rather than allowing Eli Manning to close out the year as the starter one more time.