Injured Redskins barely can field a team for practice
Washington Redskins head coach Jay Gruden during the first half at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Nov. 19, 2017 in New Orleans. Credit: Getty Images / Sean Gardner
The Giants were missing a number of key players at their Tuesday practice, but at least they had a practice. Down in Washington, where the injury report reads more like a phone book, the Redskins aren’t even able to run plays in their workouts because of a lack of personnel.
“It’s quite the challenge,” Washington coach Jay Gruden said on a conference call on Tuesday. “We’re only going to do walk-throughs this week. We’re pretty dinged up and we don’t have really enough guys to go 11-on-11 right now.”
Gruden said most of the players who normally are on the “look squad” or scout team actually will be playing on Thursday night, and there just aren’t enough able-bodied jerseys to actually play football.
“We’ve just got to get them ready to go,” Gruden said. “Maybe I’ll do a little bit of running tomorrow. We’ll wait to see how we are.”
The Giants have their own issues. They took the field on Tuesday without two key offensive linemen in D.J. Fluker (toe) and Justin Pugh (back), two key defensive linemen in Jason Pierre-Paul (knee) and Olivier Vernon (shoulder), and a key wide receiver in Sterling Shepard (illness). There are still about 48 hours to go for the quick turnaround on Thanksgiving night, so there is time for those players to get healthy. They normally would not practice until Wednesday after a Sunday game, so asking them to go on a Tuesday is a stretch even without the injuries.
Still, it leaves both teams concerned not only about who they’ll have on the field for this game, but if they’ll actually have enough.
“Our heads are spinning right now,” Gruden said. “We’re trying to get ready to play a football game, we’re trying to find out who the healthy bodies are, make sure we’ve got 46 guys to strap it up. And the 46 guys that are going to strap it up, we’ve got to get them ready to go.”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
