Grant would play Jayden Daniels in 3rd preseason game

If it were up to Grant Paulsen, he would play Jayden Daniels in the preseason finale to make use of those valuable reps.

Transcript

00:00What I would do is play Jaden Daniels in the third preseason game, because I use football games to

00:03get ready for football. I don't think I would play every starter, but I would play the starting

00:07offensive line and Jaden Daniels for a quarter or so. That's what I would do. It was pretty clear

00:13they were not going to do that, and I understand that too. They feel like he got enough work.

00:18He played a total of three drives. God forbid you ask him to play four. In 2024, we know how

00:23this goes. It's not just the commanders, by the way. I'm not joining on them. They are doing what

00:27the league does. Players are paid a lot of money. These guys' health is really all that matters to

00:33the team. I understand that. They decide the juice is not worth the squeeze. It's a little

00:37bit antiquated for me and a little bit football cowboy of me to want more constantly in the

00:42preseason. I mean, do you realize Deron Payne, John Allen, and Bobby Wagner did not play a single

00:47down in the preseason? I realize that. Now, Bobby Wagner has been in this defense.

00:52Allen and Payne have not. They obviously had a lot of practice work. They had the

00:58practices against the Jets and the Dolphins that were scrimmage like,

01:01but Daniels is done. Would you have played him at all in this game?

01:05No, I again, I count as other deposits. The joint practices where you actually got a lot

01:11of significant work, and that's the trend line to me. And here's my little bit of antiquated

01:17thinking. If I'm going to play Jaden Daniels, it means I've got to play my entire starting

01:21offensive line for as long as he's in there. I need to play all of his best weapons because

01:25there aren't as many on the outside these days, which we'll get to as we go. So it means I've

01:30got to play Terry McLaurin. I probably don't want to do that. It means I want to, I have to

01:32give Brian Robinson more work. I don't want to do that. Eckler. I don't want to do that. I would

01:36have, I would probably try to get him some time on the grass with Zach Hertz, who you haven't really

01:39had much up. So in lieu of doing that, I will say, you know, we, we put in enough work. Now,

01:44the other thing I'll do differently, just so this doesn't get lost is when we were

01:48pussyfooting around in the beginning where he was splitting reps with with Marcus Mariota,

01:52I don't do that. See, because I got in all my work, if Danny's in charge,

01:57I got extra work, extra practices, extra first team reps, all these weeks and months.

02:02I didn't sacrifice some of those. That is some weird foe competition that wasn't real.

02:06So then I can go, I did put enough work. I'm not playing in my last preseason game,

02:09which I totally get. Yeah. I don't think a couple of drives or a quarter or two is

02:14going to make all the difference in the world or all of a sudden now you weren't ready and you

02:18are in some binary or you would have played badly in week one and now you're going to play great.

02:22I just think there's a limited number of chances to feel as good as possible about what you're

02:29going to be doing against the Bucs and the amount of reps, if you want to call them that in practice,

02:34mental or physical, the amount of time on the grass, just the amount of prep that you get is

02:41less than it's ever been before. So to not take advantage of one of those golden opportunities

02:47as a potential dress rehearsal just isn't how I would do it. But the entire league almost

02:52to a club has gone away from that. Even the teams that are mostly going to be

02:56playing guys this weekend didn't play them in all three games.