The New York Giants defeated the Philadelphia Eagles, 27-17, on Sunday and moved into striking distance atop the NFC East. They are now tied for the division lead in wins (3) and have the best divisional record (3-2) of the four teams.
But don’t mention any of that to head coach Joe Judge because he simply doesn’t care. In fact, the message to his players was that the NFC East standings are completely irrelevant.
“I’ll tell everyone right now, it’s irrelevant,” Judge said after the game. “The only thing that matters is we keep improving as a team and go 1-0 every week. The overall standings, we’re not going to look at those, we’re not going to focus on those; that’s not an emphasis in our organization. We’ve got to keep improving as a team to give ourselves a chance to be the best program we can be.”
Judge has harped on going 1-0 each week since Week 1, so why change things now? If it’s not broken and all…
“Whoever we play on a given Sunday, we want to beat,” Judge said. “We pour a lot into this profession as players and coaches on a weekly basis, so we always work to get the results we want. But it’s a division game, so obviously it’s important to win for a lot of reasons. We wanted to make sure we didn’t come out and leave any meat on the bone, we had to make sure we finished as a team and got the result we wanted.”
The Giants did get the results they wanted. For the first time in what feels like an eternity, they not only defeated the Eagles, but won a key divisional game in November and are now a bye week and win over the Cincinnati Bengals away from playing meaningful December football.
