The New York Giants didn’t have good coaching last year but they did have popular coaches, it seems.
The 2019 season was a story of the team dropping out of contention for the playoffs early in the year and putting up abysmal performances through the important middle weeks of the season, and much of the blame for that went on the coaching staff including head coach Pat Shurmur – however, despite how things went down, there’s still players on the Giants team that will support Shurmur right down to this current day.
Nate Solder is one of those players, and he had some good words for 9News.com about Shurmur, following Shurmur’s addition to the Broncos staff as the offensive coordinator.
“That’s excellent. You’ve got a great staff. Growing up, I was a Broncos fan and I just wish the best for all those guys,” said Solder, who is from Denver himself and played for the University of Colorado in college.
“I think he did a great job keeping things dynamic. I think he did a great job of highlighting our best players. We had a lot of success. That wasn’t noticed in our wins and losses but I felt like we did some good things,” Solder continued, speaking about former head coach Pat Shurmur and what he brings to the Broncos as a coordinator.
It’s no secret of course that the Giants didn’t have a ton of success with Shurmur, but he appears to have been a more popular figure in the locker room than his predecessor Ben McAdoo – Shurmur did, after all, have more defenders during the season, and McAdoo didn’t get the same treatment with players even praising him in the offseason following his firing.
Shurmur might not have had success but there is one way that Joe Judge could imitate him as he eases into the head coaching role this year, and that’s forming good bonds with the players and becoming a popular figure in the locker room.