NFL Rumors: How Joe Judge landed Giants coaching job despite travel mishap

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Joe Judge got quite the job promotion last week -- despite nearly missing the interview.

That's according to NBC Sports' Peter King, who shared some noteworthy details Monday morning about the New York Giants' decision to hire the New England Patriots' special teams coordinator/wide receivers coach.

Per King, the Giants were set to pick up Judge at Penn Station in Newark, N.J., for his interview last Monday. But Judge mistakenly got off the train at Penn Station in New York, about 15 miles from the Giants staffer waiting to pick him up.

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“I didn’t know there were two Penn Stations," Judge told King, via King's "Football Morning in America" column.

Fortunately, Judge hailed an Uber and made it to the Giants' headquarters just in time for his interview -- which apparently went very, very well.

According to King, Judge "never looked at a note" during his three-hour interview with Giants president/CEO John Mara, GM Dave Gettleman and assistant GM Kevin Abrams.

"I went into the interview with the approach that everything I was going to say was coming from the heart," Judge told King. "I wasn’t trying to sell them anything."

That approach worked: When Judge left for a lunch break, Mara apparently told the room, "Wow. This has to be our guy."

Here's more from King on Mara's end-of-interview exchange with Judge:

“I told Joe how personal this was for me,” Mara told me. “I told him, ‘This has been our family business since 1925. We HAVE to get this turned around. We CAN’T be wrong on this hire.”

Mara said Judge stridently assured him that, if chosen, he could do the job. As Mara said, “Joe’s very sure of himself, but not in an arrogant way. So we liked him a lot."

Two days later, the Giants offered Judge the head coach job, assuring he wouldn't take the head coach role at his alma mater, Mississippi State.

Judge already had the benefit of working on the staffs of Nick Saban at Alabama and Bill Belichick in New England. But the 38-year-old seemingly made a strong impression on his own last week, earning an NFL head coach job after seven years as a Patriots assistant.

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