Stumbling in lead role
Can Joe Judge avoid the same trap that has felled multiple former Bill Belichick assistants?
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Every Patriots assistant who leaves to become a head coach elsewhere seems to fall into the same trap.
Matt Patricia stumbled into it. So did Josh McDaniels and Eric Mangini. They tried a little too hard to be like Bill Belichick, and it backfired spectacularly. The dour personality and tough-guy act don’t have the same impact when the coach hasn’t won six Lombardi Trophies the way Belichick has.
Belichick’s coaching tree — which also includes Brian Flores, Bill O’Brien, and Romeo Crennel — has a collective 162-231-1 (.412) record. Only O’Brien has a winning record (52-48).
From an outsider’s perspective, Giants coach Joe Judge might be falling into the same trap. An assistant coach with the Patriots for eight years, Judge has held such a grueling training camp in his second season that three veterans decided to retire after just a few days with the team.
The enduring image of Giants camp so far is Judge barking expletives at his players and punishing them with sprints and pushups after a fight broke out at practice Aug. 3. Linebacker Blake Martinez said the Giants “definitely” do more conditioning now than under previous coaches.
Heck, Judge even showed up to Thursday’s practice at Gillette Stadium wearing — what else? — a hoodie.
Judge, 39, is well aware that people are going to compare him to Belichick and the former Patriots assistants who flamed out on their own. A 6-10 record in his first season doesn’t quiet the doubters.
“I can’t control what people say,” Judge said.
But those around Judge say he’s really not trying to be like Belichick.
“Joe’s himself — how he talks, what he believes in,” said Giants safety Logan Ryan, who was a Patriot from 2013-16. “He’s really hard-nosed and blue-collar, and I think he shows that. I don’t think he’s faking it. I don’t think he’s taking it from another man. I think that’s who he really is.”
Judge swears up and down that he’s not trying to build the New York Patriots.
“I’m very careful a lot of times to make sure everyone in this organization knows that I’m not trying to make this team anything but the New York Giants,” Judge said this week. “I’m not trying to go ahead and emulate or imitate any other program.
“This is the New York Giants, and we’re going to do it with our players, we’re going to do it in our personality, we’re going to do it the way we think is best for us every day, and we’re going to work on focusing to make our team the best team that we can possibly be.”
There definitely are aspects of Judge’s coaching style that are the polar opposite of Belichick. Most notably, he is more transparent in press conferences. Thursday morning before practice, Judge told reporters that Saquon Barkley would be back at practice, and described how the team would use him. Judge also laid out the day’s practice schedule — how the periods would be split up, and the overall goal of each period. And earlier in the week, Judge detailed his plans for playing the starters for most of the first half in Sunday’s preseason game against the Patriots.
Belichick rarely if ever touches any such topics in a press conference.
Still, Judge constantly battles the comparison to Belichick, who hired Judge in 2012 as an assistant special teams coach. By 2015, Judge was promoted to special teams coordinator — a prized role under Belichick — and in 2019 he added wide receivers coach to his résumé. Belichick helped Judge get the Giants job in 2020, and called him “one of the best coaches I have been around.”
“Joe’s a good football coach. Period,” Belichick said this week. “He did a great job here for me in a number of different capacities. Most importantly, special teams, but he had a lot of other responsibilities as well.”