After Sunday’s 29-3 loss to the 6-10 Bears, Giants head coach Joe Judge launched into an 11-minute defense of the work that he’s done while going 10-22 over his first two seasons on the job.
Judge couldn’t point to wins as a sign of progress, so he focused on behind the scenes improvements to a culture that he believes was broken when he came to the team. He said the Giants quit on previous coach Pat Shurmur despite winning two of their final three games in 2019 and that he’s heard from free agents who left the Giants and want to return to the team even though they are making more money while playing for teams winning more games.
He also referenced the Patriots coaching staff being on the hot seat in 2018, which would come as a surprise to those who watched the 11-5 team win a Super Bowl but Judge was clearly in a groove. On Monday, he said he didn’t regret delivering a “dose of truth” about the job he’s done but he did get around to the fact that the team hasn’t made any progress in the stadings.
“There are obviously some things we have to do better and I’m not going to sit here and hide behind anything, I’m not going to sit here and say that we’re perfect in anything,” Judge said. “There are a lot of things that I — now am I going to go through a diagnosis or an analysis of our team and every unit and every situation? No, I’m not going to do that and I say that very openly in a lot of ways. I’m not going to go ahead and throw players under the bus or try to isolate coaches and look for a scapegoat. That’s not my style, that’s not what I’m going to do. . . . I’m very confident in the way that we’re pushing forward right now. There are things we have to improve on. Obviously, the most important thing in this league is winning, so we’ve got to do a better job putting ourselves in position to finalize and finish out some games with a win.”
Word has been that the Giants want to keep Judge for a third season, if only to avoid the optics of firing a third straight coach after two years on the job. We’ll know for sure how they plan to move forward soon enough, but there’s little doubt about Judge’s conviction that he’s the best man for the job.