It’s rare that an NFL team loses a game before its played, but New York Giants head coach Joe Judge says he saw that happen a time or two while with the New England Patriots.
Although Judge admits no team ever lost to the Pats simply because they were in awe of the dynasty team, he did say opposing head coaches would sometimes arrogantly out-think themselves.
And by “opposing head coaches,” Judge really just meant Rex Ryan during his time with the Buffalo Bills.
“I can’t think of any times before the game where we knew they lost because they were in awe,” Judge told reporters, “but I think there were times we played that we knew they lost based on how they were going to handle situations with the weather — and there were other times we saw teams that came in too overconfident and too over-focused on just a couple people.
“I can recall games with Buffalo circa 2014-15-16, and there were a lot of times where there was too much stuff pregame. And you kind of understood, ‘They are not really tuned in to the game. They are worrying too much about some kind of matchup or something that they had heard or read about in headlines that week and not really focused on the game.’ ”
Even prior to his time with the Bills, Ryan would often refer to New England as the “hatred Patriots” and would repeatedly engage in various sorts of nonsense — something that also carried over when facing the Giants.
“Normally when I see that from teams, you know they are not locked in for 60 minutes on the situations that come up and the adjustments within the game. That, to me, is always the trigger,” Judge said. “The emotion within the game is something you have to balance.”
There was no balance with Rex during his time in East Rutherford or Buffalo. He was completely fixated on the Patriots and Giants, as well as Bill Belichick and Tom Coughlin. It was an obsession, and Ryan legitimately thought he was better than both of those coaches.
“It’s not coming in in awe of a team,” Judge said, “But coming in overconfident or coming in focused on the wrong thing. We always try to bring it back with our players to, ‘You have your job and your responsibility to focus on. Keep it to that. Let’s make sure we focus on the keys and techniques we have to execute within the game.’ If we can tie that together for 60 minutes, the results are pretty good.”
Ryan never had that focus and as a result, his Bills teams went 1-3 against the Patriots during Judge’s time there. Ryan is now unemployed, while Belichick remains at his post in New England and Judge leads the Giants.
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