The New York Giants practiced under the baking sun on Monday afternoon, and roughly two hours into that practice, first-year head coach Judge Judge lit into his players because he wasn’t pleased with what he was seeing.
Judge’s anger could be heard two states away as the R-rated monologue came rolling off his tongue. And despite several players exiting the field due to injury or cramping, Judge kept the team going for the final 30 minutes.
The players responded and picked things up over the final stretch of what became the longest practice of training camp so far.
“The guys came out and they definitely ended with a good intensity at practice with competing at the end,” Judge told reporters. “We have to get it where we come off a day off and we start sharp. That’s definitely something we have to work on as a team and improve there.”
Under NFL rules, training camp practices can not exceed the two-and-a-half-hour mark, so Judge likely called it quits before he truly wanted to. But he still made sure to maximize every single minute of that time.
“[I] wanted to make sure we just established the emphasis of what the rest of practice was. Little bit more of a move the field competitive period and then working some 2-minute end of the half, end of the game situations. I just wanted to make sure the players were aware of what we were trying to do at the end of practice, so they knew the speed of the drill and the emphasis of the drill,” Judge said.
“I thought they finished the practice with a lot of intensity. We definitely got some good quality work. You value the opportunity in camp like we had today where you can work on sustained drives. You have to build in the football conditioning through playing football. We’ve done a lot of work with our guys with post-practice conditioning and trying to work through the drills to finish everything to build our endurance. Really it comes through playing down after down with the right intensity and the right technique. Our guys really did that today to finish practice.”
Things may not have gotten off to the start Judge wanted after a Sunday walkthrough, but things certainly finished on a positive note. Now Judge just has to find a way for that energy to be sustained over the entire practice period, particularly after a day off or a light day.
