BMitch & Finlay are good with Kliff Kingsbury's defense of Jayden Daniels' Week 1 rushing numbers

During his Thursday press conference, Kliff Kingsbury had some things to say about his play calling and the offense in Week 1, and had this nugget about Jayden Daniels’ development:

“You have to play to even come close to simulating a live NFL game in season. His operation, to not have any pre-snap penalties, was really good. No play clock violations, and I thought he handled himself well – and as he plays again, it will continue to slow down.”

Made it seem like the game plan was indeed to make it as easy on Daniels as possible, but what about Daniels choosing to run so much?

“First game as a rookie you’re going to have some survival mode, fight or flight going. He got out, he didn’t get hit a ton...as he plays more, he will get a better comfort level and I'll get a better feel for him."

So what say you about all that, Brian Mitchell and JP Finlay?

“I think that is really, really fair to describe Jayden's run volume in Week 1. I think he's gonna run, man; he ran in college, it's not going away, and he’ also really freaking good at it,” JP said. “I understand the concern with a quarterback with his frame taking that many hits., but I think there will be less scrambling against the Giants, because the Giants don't blitz like Tampa does, and he's now learned the speed of the NFL and I think he will look to get the ball downfield. Sure he wants to be patient, but he had great receivers at LSU, so it’s not like all of a sudden he doesn't want to make big plays.”

“It's totally fair and it's, it's what we said all week; when you ask me the question, I hear everyone saying they don’t want him to run, but he has that ability that nobody else has. Why take that away from him?” BMitch replied. “You want him to try and clean it up a little bit, but you never want him to ever think that if I run it's gonna be a problem. So he ran 16 and he, for the most part, took care of himself; there’s gonna be a game when he runs 16 and he has to run 16, and if he doesn’t, they don't win the game. I believe that he’s a competitor, and it’s gonna be hard as hell for us to get the quarterback that we like that throws the ball and doesn’t run. That's not who he is. When you’re a football player, you keep playing, I don’t care how big you are.”

And as Brian said, he knows his size and is used to it, so he knows what it’s like to take those hits – and you can listen to JP and Brian’s entire convo about this above!