"As of noon Friday, Rex Ryan had yet to see starting tailback Shonn Greene at the team's facility. Held out of practice due to a low-grade skin infection on his right foot, Greene was told by trainers to elevate his leg to reduce swelling and maintain treatment by antibiotics. He spent yesterday in the training room. On the field, meanwhile, the rotation at running back went on without him in practice.

"We're blessed," Ryan said. "We're about as deep as it gets at running back."

Greene, the embodiment of Ryan's ground-and-pound approach, will sit out Sunday night's preseason game against the Bengals at New Meadowlands Stadium. In his place, third-down tailback LaDainian Tomlinson, last year's starter, and rookie Bilal Powell, from Louisville, are expected to take a majority of the carries. Mixed in with them will be second-year back Joe McKnight, who suffered a head injury in Monday night's loss to the Texans, but returned to full contact Friday.

"Nobody seems too concerned with it," Ryan said of Greene's condition.

Tomlinson, carrying a lighter load than last season when he rushed for 914 yards, touched the ball once against Houston, but will handle the ball a lot more against Cincinnati.

"In a different role you really don't worry about the increased workload or X amount of carries," said Tomlinson, who added he was uncertain how many carries Ryan planned to give him Sunday night.

Ryan reiterated that he believes Tomlinson can still take the pounding physically, insisting that his age (32) and odometer (13,404 career rushing yards) did not preclude him from being used extensively.

"If anything happened to Shonn on a permanent basis, then L.T. would go in there," Ryan said."