If NY Giants keep Joe Judge, Daniel Jones in 2022, it could be a mistake
Adam Schefter reported Sunday that the NY Giants are expected to retain both HC Joe Judge and QB Daniel Jones. Here’s why that could end up being a bad idea.
The NY Giants need better guidance with their direction in the coming weeks and months.
New York faces another make-or-break offseason where many big names and recognizable faces will be shown the exit door as they depart the Giants‘ locker room for good.
Apparently, it appears that the team’s head coach and their quarterback will not be leaving anytime soon. Adam Schefter reported Sunday morning that the Giants are in fact expected to retain both Daniel Jones and Joe Judge for 2022.
The news spread quickly and caused some outcry with NY Giants fans and social media alike.
Judge is now just 10-21 in two seasons as a head coach. He’s far too quickly headed down Pat Shurmur and Ben McAdoo territory than he is down the path of franchise greats like Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin.
Daniel Jones has now missed time in three consecutive seasons to begin his NFL career. it’s officially a worrisome development for his long-term status as the Giants’ franchise QB.
Here are 3 reasons why retaining both Joe Judge and Daniel Jones could be a bad idea.
Joe Judge has not backed up most of his words yet
At the end of the day, NFL head coaches are really only defined by their win-loss record.
As Parcells famously said, “you are what your record says you are”. Right now, the Giants and Judge’s record in New York has been terrible through nearly two seasons.
Another famous Giants moniker voiced by Coughlin was always that “Talk is cheap. Play the game.” Judge has preached about progress and the big-picture press conference after press conference. What progress is he talking about?
It’s become hard to listen to anything he says in his postgame pressers when nothing has even remotely come to fruition through two disappointing seasons. Judge promised the Tri-state area that the Giants would not repeat the same failures that doomed their seasons from 2012-2015 along with 2017-2019.
"“We’re going to put a product on the field that the people of this city and region are going to be proud of because this team will represent this area. We will play fast, we will play downhill, we will play aggressive. We will punch you in the nose for 60 minutes, we will play every play like it has a history and a life of its own, with a relentless, competitive attitude. We will play fundamentally sound, we will not beat ourselves” – Joe Judge in his opening press conference"
Through 21 games, the NY Giants have been anything but a proud product on the field that the people of New York City and the NY/NJ areas can get behind and root for.
The 2020 and 2021 teams have not represented ‘this area’ anything even remotely to the toughness, heart, and grit of Justin Tuck, Michael Strahan, Lawrence Taylor, Carl Banks, and Sam Huff did before them. Even more importantly, all these players shared a common theme of championship DNA in their New York track records.
The NY Giants have in fact deployed some of the slowest receiver groups in the league the last two seasons, where is the speed on offense? The Giants cannot play ‘downhill football’ and they are comically bad at trying to establish any form of an offense with the capability to be a downhill running team.
The Giants have more often than not gotten punched in the nose and bashed in the mouth for 60 minutes of football through Judge’s tenure. The relentless, competitive attitude the NY Giants once had is completely nonexistent. Where is the player or coaching leadership on this team? Where is the ruthless attitude to physically impose their will on teams both offensively and defensively?
The NY Giants could be the least fundamentally sound team in the last two seasons. They routinely make mistakes that 3rd-grade peewee teams can’t correct over an entire season and Judge has now had two full calendar years to fix the most basic football and personnel issues. Lastly, the NY Giants have beaten themselves in nearly every loss they’ve had under Judge. Whether it’s penalties, sloppy play, missed assignments, protection breakdowns, busted coverages, dropped passes, coaching mistakes, and a thunderstorm of offensive turnovers, the Giants often have nobody but themselves to blame for their constant losing under Judge.
It’s one thing to lose and be outclassed or outmatched by another team. But these NY Giants are straight-up not even showing up for football games. It’s almost surprising there hasn’t been any reported friction or mutinies in the locker room because of the offense’s shortcomings and the defense always needing to find ways to bail out the side of the ball that now clearly dominates the NFL. If you lose 34-27, 38-31, or 28-24, so be it.
This NY Giants team hasn’t even been competitive for a month straight now. They sleepwalk every first half on offense and show no signs of improvement in any facet of the offense. The defense usually starts off well before breaking down over time as the game goes along due to the staggering amount they need to be on the field every game thanks to the fact the offense can barely move the chains and keep drives sustainable.
All of this falls on the shoulders of the head coach.
Right now, Judge simply isn’t getting the job done whatsoever as the NY Giants’ head coach.
Judge consistently punts in an extremely conservative fashion, he wastes timeouts in both halves as if they are meaningless, he hasn’t done well challenging plays in either season, he’s failed to adequately put together a good enough coaching staff, and he doesn’t even call the offense or defense.
So, the question is, what is Judge doing to make the Giants better right now? In what tangible way does he help the Giants win games on Sundays?
So far, that much remains to be seen.
Judge won his opening press conference before some early-season struggles in year one before he seemingly righted the ship later in the year. Judge again was praised for the Giants 2021 offseason which looking back has so far been an abject disaster almost collectively around the horn (minus the draft selection of Azeez Ojulari and a few other small transactions).
Judge needs to find something, anything within him to break the curse over the NY Giants’ franchise.
It seems like a monumental task right now but that’s the hole Judge has buried for himself. Most GMs will not view the NY Giants as a dream destination like it once was. Working with Judge could be the biggest factor in whoever the Giants hire next as their General Manager.