Santonio Holmes won’t play on Friday

Reuters

The Jets officially ruled wide receiver Santonio Holmes out of Friday’s preseason opener.

Coach Rex Ryan made the announcement at his press conference, although it’s been expected things would go this way since Holmes went down with injured ribs on Saturday night. There was no break, but Holmes said earlier this week that he’s unable to move laterally without pain and that was a pretty good sign that he’d be down for the game.

Holmes was initially expected to miss about a week, so he should be able to play in the second preseason game. Ryan also said wide receiver Jeremy Kerley and defensive tackle Sione Pouha will miss the game. Right tackle Wayne Hunter is going to be a game-time decision, although we’d expect the team to err on the side of caution since they haven’t found anyone to compete with him for the job after the Jeff Otah trade fell through.

Ryan said would feature the starters for about a quarter of the game. The second-stringers, including Tim Tebow, are expected to play two quarters before giving way to players in the nether regions of the depth chart.