When Joe Judge was hired and welcomed in as the newest head coach of the New York Giants, most were wowed at his “all business” approach. And now that the schedule has been released and the Giants know who they are playing, that “all business” approach can turn to planning.
As part of that planning, Judge intends to begin his regular season evaluations by determine which day to give the team off.
“I’d say for the most part, historically, we’ve gone out on Fridays and given them an extra day to get out there and get acclimated to a few things,” Judge said, via Giants.com. “But that’s nothing that’s locked in concrete. We’ll talk as a coaching staff and make sure we hammer what we think is best for this team. To be honest with you, we’ll have a game plan to go out there early and be prepared to cancel the extra day if we need to as we get a feel for how our team goes throughout the season.”
As far as Judge himself, he will make his coaching debut on primetime when the Giants host the Pittsburgh Steelers on Monday Night Football at Metlife Stadium.
“For me, any game is going to have the same amount of juice, I think everyone is going to have a lot of energy for the opener, us and Pittsburgh. It’s going to be a situation where look, you get to play under the lights, you get to play at home. But it’s the opening game for both teams. Both teams will be coming out of training camp sick of beating up on each other and ready to see an opponent,” Judge said.
The Giants have no division games until Week 5 when they travel to AT&T Stadium to take on the Cowboys in Jason Garrett’s return to Dallas, but that marks the first of five NFC East games over a six-week span.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re in a row or spaced out, division games are obviously big for you,” Judge said. “Those are key opponents. It definitely jumps out at you that you have five of those in six weeks and only having a couple of weeks in between each of the opponents with the Redskins and Philly. That’s sometimes a different flavor in terms of how much change can happen within those couple of weeks. How much the opponent’s done differently, how much have you adjusted. That plays more into it than just having a string of division opponents.”
Judge will also have to prepare for a few familiar faces. Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski travel to MetLife Stadium on November 2, this time in Tampa Bay Buccaneers uniforms.
“I think we’ll be very aware of Tom being on the other team, At that point of the year, I’m sure everyone is going to get used to him wearing a different color jersey. I’m in a different jersey myself,” Judge said. “We’re more conscious of the opponents we’ll be playing. The Buccaneers have a very good defense, they have tons of receivers, tons of weapons, and they made some great additions in the offseason with Tom and Rob (Gronkowski). Seeing those guys over there, no matter where our paths may have crossed in the past, all that’s going to matter is that Monday night.”
Things haven’t exactly come easy for Judge in his first offseason as head coach, and based on the regular season schedule, nothing is going to get easier.
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