Despite two horrendous seasons, Joe Judge is staying on as New York Giants head coach, according to multiple reports on Monday.
Just one day after concluding one of the worst seasons in franchise history with a 22-7 loss to the Washington Football Team to finish with a 4-13 record, Judge was back at team facilities on what is usually labeled “Black Monday” given the number of head-coach firings that come down the line.
Judge was believed to be in line for such a fate after going 9-23 over his first two seasons with the team, especially given how his team performed with little life down the stretch.
The Giants finished the 2021 season on a six-game losing streak that was exacerbated by an inept offense and conservative, questionable play-calling from Judge.
After Daniel Jones went down with a season-ending neck injury after a Week 12 win over the Philadelphia Eagles, the Giants lost each of their last six games of the season by double-digits while averaging just 9.3 points per game with Mike Glennon and Jake Fromm taking snaps under center.
Judge certainly didn’t help the lack of competitive spirit, which was made clear during Sunday’s loss to Washington when he called two consecutive quarterback sneaks for Fromm on a 2nd-&-11 and 3rd-&-9 while deep in Giants territory.
While Judge becomes the first coach in the franchise’s 97-year history to lose 13 games in a season, it seems that co-owner John Mara is more than willing to give him another opportunity to turn the Giants around with a new general manager in place.
Dave Gettleman, the man responsible for building this incompetent version of the Giants, somehow is leaving a team that finished 3-13 in 2017 in worse shape. A failure to build quintessential aspects that were atop his to-do list upon his arrival before the 2018 season, such as building the offensive line, has seen the Giants go 19-46 during his four-year tenure as general manager.
Gettleman is leaving the Giants this offseason, though the semantics of his departure — whether it really is retirement or if he’s being forced out — does not matter.
As early as Dec. 26, just hours before kick-off of their Week 16 game against the Eagles reports came down that Mara was going to bring Judge back, indicating that the final three games of the season didn’t matter much, anyway.
It showed. The Giants were trounced 34-10 by the Eagles before an embarrassing 29-3 Week 17 showing in Chicago against the Bears. In their last three games of the season, the Giants scored 20 points.
There might still be a chance, however, that Judge could be shown the door. According to NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, this is a process that could take a few days before an official announcement — similarly to the case of Tom Coughlin in 2006 when he was brought back by the team.
