The New York Giants have a new regime with new expectations this year. Joe Judge is coming in as the head coach, and one of the main advantages of this selection is his past experience. Judge has experience with both the New England Patriots and the Alabama Crimson Tide – some of the most successful programs in football, just on different levels.
Even though Judge was on special teams duties with both of those teams rather than coaching the offense or defense, he picked up some things along the way. According to new safety Xavier McKinney, the jump from Alabama to the Giants is an easy one because of that.
McKinney calls the Giants a mirror version of Alabama
Alabama is one of the top teams in the college football ranks. The team has been in the title conversation every year in recent memory. During a lot of those years, the team has come away with silverware either in the conference or nationally. If the Giants learn something from Alabama, that’s probably a good thing for them. Even if the two teams are at completely different levels.
And if Xavier McKinney is to be believed, the Giants have already brought over some of the Alabama philosophy thanks to their new head coach.
“It’s very similar. When I kind of figured [it] out and when he discussed some of his rules and how he wanted things to be handled and how we wanted us to be as a team, it was almost like a mirror version of how it was at ‘Bama for me. As far as that, it was an easy adjustment for me. I have already been in this type of system. It wasn’t that hard of a transition,” McKinney said to reporters on Thursday.
McKinney had also spoken on how the team is fan of Judge’s discipline so far.
It takes a good organization to start turning around a bad team, and hopefully, Judge can be that for the Giants going forward. In fact, that experience in other good organizations is probably the main reason the Giants hired him over other promising candidates. Based on the early comparisons, though, we can say it looks like the Giants are off to a good start in the Judge era.