New York Giants head coach Joe Judge told reporters following Monday night’s 20-17 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs that his headset had been malfunctioning. He implied that was the reason for his poor clock management and timeout use.
In fact, Judge said, he’s had headset and communication issues in each of the team’s eight games this season, which spans five different cities and stadiums.
“The headsets were going out,” Judge said. “We are having headset issues. This has happened in every game so far. We deal with the league and they keep telling us there are different software updates or whatever it is, but we had to call two timeouts today because we were trying to send the deals in personnel wise and you got half of the headsets not getting reception.
“I have had it at every single stadium this year home and away. I have had issues personally,” Judge added. “I would say this. Whoever is in charge of it. I don’t know the exact answer. I don’t know if it comes from the league or us exactly, but they better fix it fast. That is it. We get the communication back that these things are an issue and then we get told they have adjusted this, they have done this, whatever it is.”
In a statement released on Tuesday afternoon, the NFL disputed Judge’s claim and said they were unable to identify any issues with the Bose equipment during their tests.
“We are looking into the matter with all involved parties; however, we are confident that nothing is attributable to the Bose headset,” the NFL said in a statement. “We have not been able to identify an issue in last night’s game with the Giants’ communication system.
“We were not made aware of any issues during the game from the club through our standard communication channels that are used to identify gameday issues.”
Asked about the league’s statement and his previous allegations during a conference call on Tuesday, Judge continued to insists he’s in contact with the NFL and that they are looking into the matter.
However, Judge made sure to add that he’s not an excuse maker while continuing to suggest his timeout use was the result of the bad headsets.
“Let’s just clear it up real simple. We’ve talked with the league, they’re looking into resolving the issues that we’ve had throughout the year. We’ll talk continuously with them,” Judge said. “That being said, I made it very clear [on Monday] night, I’m not an excuse maker. I was asked a direct question in terms of why we weren’t (calling) timeouts in certain situations and that’s the reason. That’s all I’m going to say about the headsets.”
The Giants will host the Las Vegas Raiders this coming Sunday at MetLife Stadium. It will be interesting to see if the team’s communication issues persist or if some sort of resolution is found after eight straight weeks of alleged headset problems.
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