The New York Giants decided to go in a different direction at head coach after the 2019 campaign by firing Pat Shurmur and hiring Joe Judge to take his place.
But was that really the team’s riskiest offseason move?
Bleacher Report’s Gary Davenport thinks so. He lists Judge’s lack of head coaching and offensive/defensive coordinator experience, along with the challenges all first-year head coaches face because of the abbreviated offseason, as the reasons why.
A risky move isn’t necessarily an ill-advised one. It’s possible that Joe Judge is just the head coach to lead the New York Giants back to respectability in the NFC East.
But the 38-year-old was probably the most surprising of this year’s head coaching hires for a couple of reasons.
For starters, while Judge cut his teeth under coaching greats Nick Saban and Bill Belichick, he has no head coaching at experience at any level. He’s never been an offensive coordinator. Or a defensive coordinator. He spent the last five years running the special teams unit for the Patriots.
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.
It’s easy to say that hiring a new head coach isn’t the greatest approach in such a different, shortened offseason, but there was no telling this would happen when the Giants hired Judge in early January.
While there’s no doubt first-year head coaches face a steeper hill to climb than normal, Judge does have plenty of help around him, specifically with his offensive and defensive coordinator, as Davenport points out.
Jason Garrett has experience as both an offensive coordinator and head coach, and Patrick Graham was previously the defensive coordinator with the Miami Dolphins. That kind of experience on the sideline will no doubt help Judge make the transition.
The biggest positive we can gauge about Judge early on is that he’s going to bring discipline and accountability to Big Blue, which is something this franchise desperately needed, especially with such a young roster.
The move to hire Judge seems like the perfect fit, so saying it’s the riskiest move the team made this offseason is a bit of a stretch.
