Giants' Tyrod Taylor ready to face Jets' first-team defense for real this time

The Giants again will be without Daniel Jones on Sunday when they play the Jets at MetLife Stadium.

As was the case in the previous two weeks, Tyrod Taylor will start in his place.

The Giants announced on Friday afternoon that Jones was out, and there was no pretense this time.

Jones, who will miss his third straight game on Sunday, has yet to be medically cleared for contact as he deals with his second neck injury in the last three seasons.

With the Giants treating this week’s Jones update differently from previous updates, the situation has become murky.

Last week, coach Brian Daboll said: “I don’t have a crystal ball with injuries, but he is getting better, and we’ll see where he is next week.”

This is now “next week.” And Jones was ruled out early.

Daboll conceded that his latest answer was not as definitive as it was last week, when he said Jones’ season was “not over.”

It seems reasonable to believe that the Giants’ medical staff is highly involved in all conversations and evaluations concerning Jones, who was injured on Oct. 8 when he was sacked by Andy Van Ginkel in the fourth quarter of the Giants’ 31-16 loss in Miami. He has participated in practice on a limited basis but has not taken the field in a game since.

For Taylor, it will be interesting to see how he fares in a third consecutive start.

“Obviously, the best experience, I’d say, is playing,” he said. “I’m always going to be the same person day in and day out from a preparation standpoint and as a leader, just sharing what I can with the team, whether it’s me actually out there contributing, or me doing stuff from a leadership role.”

With Taylor as a starter this season, the Giants have lost to the Bills on the road and defeated the Commanders at home. Taylor threw two touchdown passes against Washington last Sunday in a 14-7 win that snapped a four-game losing streak.

He has not thrown an interception in 80 pass attempts this season and has pushed the ball down the field, completing six passes for more than 20 yards.

“I feel comfortable in our offense,” Taylor said. “I feel comfortable with the playmakers that we have outside. It’s up to me, obviously, to get the ball to those guys, so just trying to spread it around as much as possible, and a lot of those guys can create plays.”

Taylor has made three consecutive starts in a season three times in his 13-year career, most recently two years ago with Houston.

He will start against the Jets for the second time this year. He played the first two series of the Giants’ preseason finale on Aug. 26, completing half of his four passes against the Jets’ first-team defense.

“You go back, you watch preseason games and you try to get a feel for a team,” Taylor said. “But they’ve also played a number of games throughout the year now that you can get a sense of how they flow as a team.

“Preseason, some teams reserve guys and don’t show as much. Obviously, those were their starters that we played against. Sometimes the calls aren’t the same. They’ve played enough in the regular season now that we can get a good sense of them and see kind of what to expect. But ultimately, week in and week out, it’s about us executing our offense.”

By Kimberly Jones

kimberly.jones@newsday.comkimjonessports

Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.