Jacksonville Jaguars coach Mike Mularkey confirmed Monday that Maurice Jones-Drew should play in the team's season opener. He even has a role for Jones-Drew in mind.
"Whoever starts, the other one will handle third downs and then get series on their own to give the other guy a blow so they can come back fresh," Mularkey said.
The coach already indicated that Rashad Jennings is expected to start in Sunday's opener against the Minnesota Vikings and followed that up Monday by answering, "Yes," when asked if Jennings would start the game. With Adrian Peterson shaky to play, the starting running back matchup could be Toby Gerhart vs. Rashad Jennings. Mularkey didn't see anything glaring mentally from Jones-Drew at practice Monday that would slow him down in the team's new offense.
"I want to be as fluid as I can with the offense," Jones-Drew told The Florida Times-Union. "Today I felt like I took tremendous strides from (Sunday). I just want to keep going. I just want to get more fluid with the offense so there’s not a lot of thinking."
We're just happy to no longer be thinking that much about Jones-Drew's pointless holdout.
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.