The New York Giants made a somewhat quick and surprising decision recently to hire Patriots special teams coordinator and wide receivers coach Joe Judge as their next head coach, amid speculation that the team was going to go for Matt Rhule or a number of other options who have a stronger reputation, but their hiring period isn’t over. The Giants still need to rebuild at the coordinator positions after the last couple of seasons showed just how much bad coordinators can hurt the success of a team.
There’s been some mention of the Giants possibly going for Jason Garrett as the offensive coordinator, but there’s also conflicting reports coming out that will make many fans who are firmly in the anti-Garrett camp breathe a sigh of relief. According to Ralph Vacchiano, the Giants didn’t interview Garrett to become the offensive coordinator and Judge will be able to pick his own staff.
A clarification from earlier: The Giants have NOT requested permission to speak to Jason Garrett about their offensive coordinator job, per a source. Their request was for their head coaching job, obviously before they decided to hire Joe Judge.
Judge will get to pick his staff.
— Ralph Vacchiano (@RalphVacchiano) January 7, 2020
Notably, that means the responsibility of finding the right coordinators isn’t going to fall on the shoulders of General Manager Dave Gettleman, which is something of an encouraging sign. This offseason, it was a frequently brought up point that the Giants will have to give more control to the head coach rather than the GM to get a good coach on the market, and it looks like that’s what the organization is doing right now – at least on this matter.
Of course, as an outsider candidate for the head coaching job, Judge doesn’t have as well known a list of preferred candidates for the coordinator positions as some of the others who the Giants were linked to earlier. Who will end up linked to those roles in the coming days? That’s something we’ll all find out soon.