It was clear that the New York Giants were going to need a new head coach coming into 2020. The Pat Shurmur era didn’t work out, and losing the locker room had even some of the most optimistic voices calling for the Giants to make a change at coach at the end of the 2019 season. Things had hit a breaking point, and a lot of names were mentioned as options for a new head coach for the Giants.
One of the names that wasn’t brought up much at all was Joe Judge. However, that didn’t change what the Giants saw in Judge. It also didn’t change that they would eventually hire him to become the next head coach.
But Judge’s experience is limited. He’s never been an offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator. With the Patriots, he was the special teams coordinator. He was responsible for a part of the game that’s the most forgotten.
It’s a big risk for the Giants, even if Judge does have support from Nick Saban and Bill Belichick.
According to Bleacher Report, that’s the biggest risk that the Giants have taken this offseason.
To his credit, Judge hired a veteran with head coaching experience to run his offense in former Cowboys head man Jason Garrett.
But given the massive monkey wrench the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into the 2020 offseason, this year’s first-time head coaches (like Judge) face even more adversity than they usually would.
The Giants don’t just have a new head coach in Judge, but also many new staff members on offense and defense starting with offensive coordinator Jason Garrett and defensive coordinator Patrick Graham. The Judge Administration is all new, making it an even bigger wild card for the team, and with potentially no preseason this year, we might not get to see a glimpse of how the move will pan out until September when the season begins.
But with the Giants having performed poorly under their past two staffs, a wild card is a welcome change at this point to a fanbase that’s tired of the same types of hires as Ben McAdoo and Pat Shurmur.