New York Giants: Joe Judge And College Assistant Reunite With Latest Hire

New York Giants, Joe Judge
Jan 9, 2020; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; Introductory press conference of New York Giants new head coach Joe Judge at MetLife Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Danielle Parhizkaran-USA TODAY Sports

The New York Giants mostly have their staff set for the 2020 season but despite most of the required coaches already having been hired, head coach Joe Judge had one more name to bring in. Amos Jones is perhaps the last one to join the staff if there’s no more surprise hires but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Jones is the least significant to get hired this offseason.

Some of the other hires have past connections to Joe Judge but from the looks of things, no one has more of those connections than Jones, who is not only older than the Giants head coach but was the special teams coordinator and linebackers coach when Judge was at Mississippi State. Since then, the two have had diverging paths.

Judge ended up working as a coach under Nick Saban at Alabama and then under Bill Belichick in New England, while Jones would spend a year as the outside linebackers coach for the Bulldogs before jumping to the NFL and serving in various roles with the Steelers, Cardinals, Browns, and Buccaneers before landing at the Giants.

Much of the past experience in the NFL for Jones has come in the form of special teams work but it seems like Judge has enough trust in Jones to give him a larger role, having him serve as an assistant rather than a member of the special teams staff – which already has a coordinator.

This could possibly be the last hire of the offseason, assuming the Giants have no more scares with coaches like Bret Bielema being recruited by colleges. Will the new staff immediately help the team pick up performance? We’ll see, but from the hires so far it looks like there’s more to be excited about than there was when Pat Shurmur took over, and it looks like this staff really has Judge’s fingerprints on it, for better or worse.