NY Giants: 5 reasons to love the Joe Judge hiring

5. He’s focused on head coaching duties

One of the most maddening things about Pat Shurmur during his tenure as the head coach of the NY Giants was his unwillingness to relinquish the playcalling duties to an offensive coordinator and focus solely on his duties as a head coach.  As a result, Shurmur would make a number of game management blunders that would cost the team an opportunity to win games.

Joe Judge does not appear willing to make the same mistakes as his predecessor. In his press conference, he remarked “I’m not going to be the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, or special teams coordinator. I will work with all three sides of the ball, but the primary focus I’m going to have as the head coach, is I’m going to make sure we are fundamentally sound, situationally aware and we play with relentless effort.”

Judge also quipped that “as a head coach you have to be able to manage time and people” as your primary task. This is clearly something that was not grasped by the previous coach who seemed more preoccupied with the desire to be the offensive play-caller than the head coach.

This bodes well for a franchise that needed its head coach to focus on the task of being a head coach. Judge is interviewing and examining potential fits for his coaching staff and stated that he only wants staff members who are concerned with bettering the players on the roster and wants no one with a hidden agenda.

He announced that he will be retaining special teams coach Thomas McGaughey as part of his staff. This move was met with praise, as McGaughey was extremely popular amongst players and had a great deal of success last season.

It was encouraging to hear Judge mention that he has a plan to address his lack of head coaching experience when he stated that he would be relying on general manager Dave Gettleman and the experience of his assistant coaches to “fill in the blanks for his head coaching experience”. That statement would suggest that Judge is searching for assistants with prior head coaching experience to assist him with his inaugural head coaching venture.

While we only have a press conference to use as a baseline for Judge’s head coaching career with the NY Giants at the moment, that is all we can examine until the team begins to practice and play. Going off of what little we have, it appears as though the Giants hired a head coach that intends on bringing in a blue-collar fundamentally sound style of football.

Given how little fanfare Judge had prior to his hire and the amount of criticism that was initially cast upon him and the organization for opting to go with him, he is likely to have a rather large chip on his shoulder.

Hopefully, he is able to parlay that into a long and successful career with the NY Giants.