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