Rush to Judge-ment

The Giants haven’t been a good franchise for the better part of the past decade.

They haven’t drafted well, haven’t graded well in free agency and maybe more than anything, they haven’t coached well at all.

Tom Coughlin was not a good coach in his final couple seasons. Ben McAdoo was a decent coach with the personality and leadership skills of a snail. Pat Shurmur was a below-average coach surrounded by an underwhelming staff.

The Giants have been wrong an awful lot since the 2011 season. Now they are trying to recover from consecutive head coaching blunders. Owners are the only people who get to keep their jobs after making two colossal mistakes. The Mara and Tisch families are also on the hook for general manager Dave Gettleman, who has shown mixed results since his hiring before the 2018 season.

Now the Giants take a stab at Joe Judge, fresh off an eight-season apprenticeship with the New England Belichicks. He was not a former NFL head coach. He was not a former NFL offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator, all common blueprints for head coaching hires. Judge brings a stint with Nick Saban at Alabama and the run as a Belichick disciple. He is 38 years old, precisely the age of McAdoo when the Giants hired him as head coach in 2016 following two seasons as their offensive coordinator. Except McAdoo was coming off two seasons of running the Giants’ offense under Coughlin. McAdoo brought a duffel bag full of statistics showing that he had helped make Eli Manning a better quarterback, likely the last time any coach would have such an impact on Manning’s career.