Now it’s time to judge Joe
The Giants, who have won 23 of the 74 games they’ve played since the last time they had a winning record, have now decided that the only way to get things going in the right direction again is to fire their offensive coordinator. It reminds you of the old days at Yankee Stadium when George Steinbrenner would fire a pitching coach.
But this isn’t about Jason Garrett. From now until the end of the regular season, this is about the head coach, who loses his cover now. He is the one who owns everything that happens on offense for the Giants the rest of the way, good or bad. Judge needs to put some points on the board as much as Daniel Jones does.
Maybe the Giants can put it on the Eagles today, one of the teams ahead of them in the NFC East, the way the Bucs put it on the Giants Monday night, before Garrett officially went under the team bus the next day. Or, better yet: The Giants need to put it on the Eagles.
Somehow we’re always being told that the Giants, no matter what their losing record is at a particular moment, are about to make a big move, and postseason here they come. They have gotten rolled by the Bucs and Rams and Cowboys, three of the best teams in their conference this season. Maybe they can start to do that against the 5-6 Eagles.
They go up against Jalen Hurts, who has thrown 13 touchdown passes so far and run for eight more. They do that with Jones, who has thrown nine touchdown passes in 10 games. Maybe this is the day he has a 300-yard passing game, something just about everybody in the league can manage. Maybe this is the day the Giants can get past 30 points.
Maybe this is the day when Jones does what star quarterbacks are supposed to do in the NFL, which means take his team down the field at the end to win the game. Maybe that will show Giants fans that firing Garrett can be the kind of dramatic, game-changing play that the Giants hardly ever make on offense. Maybe it will turn things around. No one would suggest that it will do for this Giants team what Jim Fassel’s playoff guarantee in 2000 did, when the Giants did make a big move that took them all the way to the Super Bowl. But maybe it will throw a charge on them, and into MetLife Stadium.
“Ultimately, I’ll make every decision based on what’s best for the team long term,” Judge said the other day in explaining himself a lot better than he did Monday night. “I feel we have to be more productive as an offense. Generally speaking, the offense’s job is to score points. I don’t believe we’re scoring enough points. It’s my job as the head coach to make sure I give our players an opportunity to go out there and make plays.”
Did Judge have a right to make this move? Of course he did. Does Garrett have a right to wonder how differently this all might have gone with a real offensive line and more playmakers and Saquon Barkley still looking like the player he was as a rookie? Boy, does he ever. But weaponizing the offense is on Judge going forward, the former special teams coach for the Patriots who has such immense power with the Giants these days. Because it is the same now with him as it is for all coaches in sports who portray their players as underachievers. At some point you take a step back and ask this question:
Who exactly is coaching this underachieving team?
Here is another question: If Joe Judge, who we were supposed to believe is the next Belichick, was so upset about what he was seeing from Garrett and with Jones and the Giants offense, why didn’t he take control of it sooner? What law was passed that he couldn’t go to Garrett and tell him he wanted him to take a different approach. It might be because he doesn’t know what the different approach should be. Maybe he’ll know it if he sees it, starting as early as Sunday.
There was a reason why Bill Parcells wanted his old offensive coordinator, Ron Erhardt, right there on the sideline. Because you know what he’d do sometimes? Parcells would walk over to Erhardt and say, “Run the ball.”
Judge’s record as the Giants’ head coach is now 9-17. But always we’re supposed to believe the blame should go everywhere else. Daniel
Jones. Dave Gettleman. The offensive line. Lack of talent on both sides of the ball. And, finally, Jason Garrett most of all.
The Giants have seven games left: Eagles, Dolphins, Chargers, Cowboys, Eagles again, Bears, Washington Football Team. Are there winnable games on that schedule? If you are a Giants fan, you need to look at the schedule and yourself a question: How many games do they have to win to make you believe that they are going in the right direction again, for the first time since they were 11-5 under Ben McAdoo?
Gettleman has not done the job here, by any measure, and will probably make things easy on John Mara and Steve Tisch when the season is over by retiring. He is the easiest and biggest target for where the Giants are, 26 games into Judge’s stewardship. There’s the idea before the Bucs game that the Giants are about to make a move, and now you look at the standings and see them in last place in the NFC East, without a victory as good as the Washington Football Team had against Touchdown Tom and the Bucs.
They have had one winning season since the second Super Bowl against the Patriots. The last time they won the East was in that Super Bowl season. Other than that, they have only won as many as seven games once. And maybe the worst part of all is how consistently unwatchable they have become, as they have gone from the great Tom Coughlin to McAdoo to Pat Shurmur now to Judge.
So here is their chance today to prove that Judge really has saved the Giants by firing Jason Garrett. Here is the team’s chance, at home, to ring up the Eagles, score some points against one of the four losing records on the rest of the schedule, get to 4-7 going into the Dolphins game.
“We have to do everything better,” Joe Judge said after the Bucs game.
Him first, starting today at one.