The Giants announced that quarterback Jaxson Dart cleared the concussion protocol on Thursday and that made it all but certain that he will be back in the starting lineup for Monday night’s game against the Patriots.
On Friday, interim head coach Mike Kafka removed the “all but” portion of that status. Dart will be the starter after missing the team’s last two games.
Dart was injured against the Bears in Week 11 and the Giants fired Brian Daboll the next day, so this will be his first chance to play with the team’s new head coach. Kafka was the offensive play-caller before his promotion and he’s retained that role, so it will be interesting to see if the Giants curtail Dart’s running in an effort to keep him from suffering another injury.
Kafka also said that he feels good about having defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence (elbow) in the lineup despite the fact that Lawrence has not practiced this week. The team will release their injury designations on Saturday.
Jaxson Dart is set to return to the starting lineup for the Giants.
Dart missed the last two games after suffering a concussion against the Bears in Week 10, but he returned to practice last week and the team announced on Thursday that he has cleared the concussion protocol. That clears the way for him to start at quarterback against the Patriots on Monday night.
Jameis Winston started for the Giants the last two weeks and had the team in the lead in both fourth quarters before collapsing to lose to the Packers and Lions.
That contributed to the Giants’ decision to fire defensive coordinator Shane Bowen this week and they’ll hope that change along with getting Dart back move them in a better direction.
Jordon Hudson, the 24-year-old girlfriend of 73-year-old North Carolina coach Bill Belichick, recently said she’s suing Pablo Torre. Earlier this week, Belichick was asked about the development.
“How much of those distractions seeped out into the team?” a reporter said. “How much time do they take from what you’re trying to accomplish? And is there a way to in your mind kind of try to eliminate some of that drama?”
“Yeah, I’m just focused on the game,” Belichick said, referring to the season finale against N.C. State. “That’s what our team’s focused on.”
It’s hard to imagine that the situation hasn’t trickled into the locker room, at some level. With all those players, one of them surely saw something about the looming (supposedly) lawsuit — or about the social-media skirmish that followed between Hudson and Torre.
If Hudson is getting good legal advice, and if she’s following it, she’d be saying nothing about the situation. Her willingness to try to prove via Twitter that Torre made “MANY inaccurate and materially defamatory” statements (if she thinks what she posted is some sort of smoking gun, good luck in court) reveals to the trained eye a significant degree of naivete regarding how the litigation world works.
It makes her potential case seem, in my opinion, unserious. It makes her seem, in my opinion, unserious. It makes the whole thing look like, in my opinion, a way for her to remain relevant after the UNC football season ends in two days.
It also reflects poorly, in my opinion, on Belichick. If, as many believe, he still wants to get back to the NFL, this kind of stuff won’t make him any more attractive to owners than he otherwise is.
That currently seems to fall somewhere between “not very” and “not at all.”
Yeah, sure. It only takes one team. And yeah, sure, there are more than a few dysfunctional NFL teams. It’s hard to imagine even the most dysfunctional team welcoming Belichick to town — and trying to sell him to the media and fan base — after the cumulative events and developments of the past 12 months.
Should he be elected without hesitation to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the coming weeks? Definitely. Have the accomplishments that make Belichick worthy of a no-debate, first-ballot enshrinement been obscured by a variety of other factors since he last won a Super Bowl seven years ago?
Absolutely.
The Patriots will be without rookie left tackle Will Campbell for at least the next four games.
Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel said at Wednesday’s press conference that Campbell is going on injured reserve after hurting his knee in last Sunday’s win over the Bengals.
Vrabel said earlier this week that he expected Campbell to miss a couple of weeks, but that he didn’t think it was a season-ending injury. The Patriots have a bye after facing the Giants on Monday night in Week 13, so Campbell will have five weeks to recover before he’ll be eligible to return in Week 18.
The Patriots are likely to make the playoffs, which extends the period that Campbell would have to make it back on the field but his absence won’t be a help as they try to nail down the No. 1 seed in the AFC.
Jaxson Dart is getting closer to resuming his rookie season.
The Giants quarterback has missed two games since suffering a Week 10 concussion against the Bears. Via Jordan Raanan of ESPN.com, Giants interim coach Mike Kafka said that Dart will be a “full participant” in practice on Wednesday.
Raanan characterizes the comments as meaning Dart and Jameis Winston will both take first-team reps on Wednesday. Because the Giants don’t play until Monday night against the Patriots, there will be no practice report today.
If first-team reps are shared on Thursday, Dart should be listed as a “limited” participant in practice. As we (and the Ravens) learned last month, if a player doesn’t take all of his normal reps, he should be listed as “limited.”
And so, if Dart is listed as a “full” participant on Thursday, it will mean that he took every first-team rep.
Regardless, he seems to be moving toward receiving full clearance to return to the field.
