The Giants’ firing of Joe Judge says more about the lost franchise than it does about the coach – Orange County Register

Joe Judge sounded like an outsider during his infamous Chicago journey, which is most telling of all.

When Judge flew off the wheel on January 2, blowing away the effort and culture of Giants predecessor Pat Shurmur, Judge sounded like someone from outside the Giants family who was used to what’s better and disgusted with what he inherited when he arrived.

“The hardest thing to change in a club is the way people think,” Judge said that day.

Here’s why Tuesday night’s firing of Judge was inevitable, because Giants is a rudderless franchise that doesn’t know top to bottom. And while everyone in the league already knows that, they certainly don’t want to be told so by their coaches.

However, it’s hard to believe that John Mara and Steve Tisch really intended to hire an outside GM and give him the autonomy to run a fully-fit franchise, because they never will. Ignore scale.

They don’t understand what it takes to build a winner. They are not responsible for dragging on the lengthy rebuilding process beyond Judge’s first year, instead blaming their failure on a 38-year-old first-time head coach who nearly reached the knockout stage during a pandemic in 2020.

The manner in which Judge wears the cape and dagger that the Giant pulls out and shoots is shady.

The fact that the team honored GM Dave Gettleman 19-46 with field photos and defending him with a sneaky “retirement” press release – only to then blow Judge out the door – is an indication of who the Giants are.

They are an arrogant brand with friends in high positions who always try to convince the fans to trust the team’s shield with their own eyes.

Judge leaves with a 10-23 record over two seasons, the third coach in a row that the Giants fire during or after their second season with the team.

There’s a reason they fired three coaches in just over five calendar years. That’s because coaches aren’t the reason their squads go bad and they keep losing.

The Giants’ 22-59 record over the past five years has been tied with the worst record in the league against the Jets, and now it would be an insult to include the Jets in the same sentence.

The judge undeniably dug his own grave at the end, mostly by His wild press conference after the Bears . loss. His show isn’t perfect.

But here’s what happened: the Giants’ undying loyalty to Eli Manning in 2017 led them to hire a GM in Gettleman who would try to win QB one more time.

Their undying loyalty to Gettleman as Manning and the deteriorating roster dug them into the NFL’s basement, costing Shurmur his job.

And then, manipulating Judge with Gettleman’s mismanagement cost a second coach his job before the GM was eventually kicked out the door.

Judge inherited a bad GM, a bad squad, and hired an offensive dispatcher in Jason Garrett that everyone knew was the real choice of ownership.

The offense deepened after Garrett opened fire midway through the season, but the main reasons were Daniel Jones’ neck injury and an offensive line with a good player in the starting year.

Judge’s Chicago’s words make things worse for him because it illuminates the nation’s spotlight on the Giants’ dysfunction more brightly than ever. The defense played well and worked hard for him, which cannot be said of the previous two head coaches.

But the Giants’ decision to cast Mike Glennon and Jake Fromm as their backup QB makes them look like a high school offense. So when anorexia Judge sneaks two QBs to avoid one safety In the game against Washington, the pitchers were all gone and the Giants had nowhere to hide.

The real shame of firing Judge is that he will be the Mississippi State head coach until Mara and the Giants see something more of him in January 2020.

Mara sees a Patriot with a vision of a new Giant Road and hires Judge, knowing full well that it’s unreasonable to expect a quick fix. Judge and the Giants agree that this will be a long rebuilding process, one that takes time and some painful changes.

Judge has made progress when it comes to trying to get behind the scenes of this franchise, including with their asset management. His influence was most evident in last spring’s draft day trading, which earned the Giants a second top 7 pick in this April’s NFL Draft.

What do you think, Gettleman, who won’t be on the phone before the draft plans to return to 2nd overall in 2018, suddenly understand what the value of a draft capital acquisition is?

However, approaching the 2020 season, the impatient Giants decided it was time to abandon the long-term plan and start working on it. They supervised Leonard Williams, Kenny Golladay, Adoree Jackson, and Kyle Rudolph. They decided they could win NFC East.

They think – Mara and Tisch think – they are a better team than they really are.

The Giants’ inability to judge themselves is their greatest weakness. That’s why they never get meaningfully better. They never understood how far behind they were in the first place.

The only ray of hope for the future is that their nine GM candidates are now all outsiders and Mara is promising autonomy to his next GM to run the entire football operation, including coaching staff.

However, Mara’s cold, prepared statement about Judge’s protracted dismissal is a reminder that Giants’ ownership doesn’t answer to anyone.

“Steve [Tisch] and I both believe it is in our best interest to move our franchise in a different direction,” the Mara post said. “We met Joe [Monday] afternoon to discuss the state of the team. I met Joe again this afternoon, and it was during that conversation that I informed Joe of our decision. We appreciate Joe’s efforts on behalf of the organization.

“I said before the start of the season that I wanted to feel good about the direction we were heading when we played the last game of the season,” added Mara. “Unfortunately, I can’t make that statement, which is why we made this decision.”

These are the words of Mara, the man who spoke at Judge’s hiring press conference about “his poise, his confidence, his leadership, his knowledge of the game play [and] what it takes to build a winning program, the ability to contact the player and of course his work ethic. ”

This is the reason that Tuesday will not live up to the Judge’s final indictment. It will be remembered as an indictment of the verdict of Mara and Tisch, who have waived any benefit of the doubt until they receive this right.

The hardest thing to change in an NFL club, as Judge himself put it, is the way people think.