The New York Giants will introduce Joe Judge at 2:00 p.m. ET on Thursday afternoon at MetLife Stadium, but even before his first public press conference, Judge sat down with Bob Papa for his first official interview as head coach.
Right out of the gate, the clearly focused, stern and articulate Judge let it be known that he’s bringing an old school approach back to Big Blue.
“I’m a little bit old school in my philosophy on football. I think it’s a tough game. It’s a contact game,” Judge said. “If you want to win games, you have to be a physical team. You have to run the ball, stop the run and cover kicks. Those are three things you have to do to be a physical team.
“We’re going to look for smart, tough, fundamentally sound players. My job as a head coach is simple: make sure we play fundamentally sound and make sure we can handle the situation under pressure.”
Judge feels confident that after meeting with co-owner John Mara and general manager Dave Gettleman extensively, their philosophies matched up and made them an ideal pairing.
“I’m focused on the details. I am focused on winning every day one day at a time,” Judge said. “You’re not going to accomplish the big picture all at once. You have to start at the bottom, build the foundation and at the end you’ll have the result you want.”
And Judge’s final message (before his first official message at 2:00 p.m.) to the fans?
“We’re going to play fast, we’re going to play tough and we’re going to go out there every week and we’re not going to beat ourselves,” Judge said. “This team going forward has to work on the little details and we’re going to put a product on the field that’s going to make people proud to say they’re Giants fans.
“We’re going to play tough for you. That you have my word on. If they don’t play tough, they won’t be on the field.
“I want to line up, I want to punch the guy in the nose for 60 minutes and at the end of the day, we know we dominated the man against us and won the outcome.”
Phew boy. It’s a new era in New York.
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