When the Giants fired Pat Shurmur on December 30, speculation ran high as to what type of head coach his replacement would be. A retread like Jason Garrett ? A college coach like Baylor’s Matt Rhule? Or, an outside-the-box pick? In the end, though the team reached out to the Cowboys to speak with Garrett (who has not been fired; his contract simply expires on January 14), and were in talks with Rhule until he accepted the Carolina Panthers’ open head coach position, general manager Dave Gettleman and the Giants’ front office went way outside the box with the hire of former Patriots special teams coordinator and wide receivers coach Joe Judge.
It’s a controversial move for multiple reasons. Many would prefer that the Giants go home-run swinging with someone like Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, but it’s exceedingly difficult to reconcile Gettleman’s impulsive tendencies and need for control with McDaniels’ impulsive tendencies and need for control. And those unfamiliar with Judge’s eight years Bill Belichick’s special teams staff as an assistant and coordinator, focusing instead on his one season coaching New England’s entirely underwhelming cadre of receivers, might wonder what the heck the Giants are thinking here.
What’s easy to overlook with such speculation is Belichick’s emphasis on special teams, and the extent to which he respects a coach if that coach is given two responsibilities at once. Belichick started his coaching career as the Lions’ special teams coach in 1976, and his responsibilities for the Broncos in 1978, and the Giants from 1979 through 1984, included special teams as well as defensive assistant and linebackers coach responsibilities. And it’s well-known that, once you’re on Belichick’s staff, he will test you to the extreme in both the amount and the diversity of responsibility you can handle.
Judge, who started his coaching career as a special teams/linebackers coach (sound familiar?) at Birmingham-Southern in 2008 after three seasons as a graduate assistant under Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State, spent 2009 through 2011 as a football analyst under Nick Saban at Alabama. The relationship between Belichick and Saban goes back decades, so if Judge passed the Saban test, Belichick was sure to hear about it.
Special teams have been a strength through Judge’s tenure, but it’s safe to say the Giants didn’t make him their head coach because he can teach gunners to down punts inside the 10-yard line. The Giants were looking for a total overhaul in culture, and while that’s a common refrain among teams who don’t really understand what it means, Judge appears to check all the boxes. With successful tenures under the most demanding and successful coaches at both the college and pro levels, Judge has proven than he can earn the respect of hard guys who take their football very seriously. That may not prepare him for Gettleman’s wack-a-doo soundbites and regressive personnel philosophy, but he’s already seen a lot.
That Judge is working on his PhD in education from Mississippi State had to be another feather in his cap. Judge started that process in 2005, and persisted as his coaching career advanced.
“I would be at practice running drills, and when it hit a certain time at the end of practice, I had to sprint to my car to get over to class and present on whatever I was doing that night or take a test or get home in time to finalize a paper that had to be due at a certain time,” Judge said last November. “Then I’d head back to the office and finish breakdowns and game planning for the next day.”
The hire looks better on paper once you dig into it, but of course, the real tests begin now, as Judge has to help turn around a team that finished 4-12 last season, and doesn’t have a ton of talent beyond quarterback Daniel Jones and running back Saquon Barkley. Judge is not walking into the favorable situation John Harbaugh had when the former Eagles special teams coordinator and defensive backs coach replaced Brian Billick in Baltimore in 2008. Harbaugh had a very good team. He had an amazingly astute general manager in Ozzie Newsome. The jury is still very much out on Gettleman’s ability to transcend his own worst characteristics to build a top-level team.
Judge will have to hire the right people to run his offense and defense, and there’s no way to know how much control he’ll have over that. But from the perspective of challenges faced and overcome, the Giants made a fascinating hire that might just surprise everyone a couple years down the road.