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After the New York Giants left the field following an embarrassing 36-9 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday afternoon, the organization would go completely silent for 45 minutes.
Usually, coaches and players are quick to get their media responsibilities over and done with, but on this day, no one emerged from the locker room for nearly an hour.
When head coach Joe Judge did finally take a seat for his Zoom conference, it was clear that frustration had begun to boil over.
“Real simple, I’ll be honest with you up front, I’ll obviously answer your questions, I’m going to reserve a lot of analysis for the game until I have a chance to thoroughly review the tape and go over everything we’re doing. I’m going to work the rest of the night doing that. We’re not going to go ahead and postpone anything we have to go get working on,” Judge told reporters.
“So, go ahead and any questions you have right now, I can answer, but guys, I’m telling you up front, there’s a lot of things, details on the game, that I’m going to reserve until I watch the tape.”
Judge has rarely pulled the, “I need to watch the film” card early in his Giants career, but this time was different. His team had just been completely humiliated by the 49ers’ JV squad and they were dominated in every aspect of the game — offense, defense, special teams and, yes, coaching.
“Obviously, we all have to do our job better, start with coaching better, and we got to make sure we’re putting the players in the right positions,” Judge said.
One of those coaching errors came on a fourth-and-1 deep in Giants territory. Daniel Jones tried to sneak the ball, but the offensive line was stonewalled and the second-year quarterback came up short.
At the time, the Giants were fading, but still had the game within reach. However, after failing to convert, New York allowed San Francisco to take advantage of a short field and all hope as lost at that point.
“I’m not going to apologize for being aggressive,” a defiant Judge said. “I challenge these guys to come out and be aggressive and fight. I can self-scout myself and see when it is and isn’t time to go for it. But that moment in the game, I want to be aggressive. You look at me as a coach and say that might not be the best decision at the time, but I’m not going to apologize for being aggressive in that situation. I have confidence in our players, and I want to make sure that we play that confidence by letting them play aggressive.”
Despite the mistakes and the reality that the Giants appear to be regressing each week, Judge continues to promise that this team will reflect the hard-working blue-collar people that make up the fanbase.
“I think about toughness and how you respond to things. Obviously we have some adversity right now that we have to respond to, but when I think about this area, you talk about blue-collar, people that work blue-collar livings, like my family did growing up, you just wake up every day no matter the circumstances and you go back to the grindstone, and that’s what our team is going to do,” Judge said.
“We’re not looking for excuses, we’re not pointing fingers, we’re not looking for shortcuts, we’re working on building this thing, and building this thing the right way for this area, alright, for the families that this team represents, and we’re going to come back Wednesday, and we’re going to work our butts off and get this thing right moving forward. So, in terms of the people in the area want to know the direction this program is going, I can assure you that I take a great deal of pride, and I put a lot personally into this, to make sure the product they see on this field is something they can be proud of, and although they’re disappointed with some of the things that have happened on the field, I can assure you we’re working the same way they work every day, to get our butts back to work, to get it right, and to get it going forward.”
Unfortunately for Judge & Co., “working hard” during practices that no one can attend is not enough to satisfy a fanbase that has been remarkably patient during a stretch in which the team has gone 12-39 over its past 51 games.
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