15 wild quotes from Giants coach Joe Judge’s epic rant
The New York Giants were completely disassembled by the Chicago Bears on Sunday afternoon at Soldier Field. The game was literally over after the very first play and the remaining 59 minutes were very much like torture.
Following the game, a clearly frustrated Joe Judge was asked why he had faith about turning around a bad Giants team. What ensured was a nearly 12-minute rant that covered an impressively wide range of topics.
Some of the rant came off as little more than babble, while other parts of it had substance. Judge touched on Vegas odds, former players, Pat Shurmur’s team, Giants fans and much, much more.
Below is a look at 15 of the craziest things that came out of Judge’s mouth on Sunday.
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Playing in New York
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“You know, we talk inside a lot. Okay? And I don’t ever ask for patience from anybody. Let’s get that clear right now. All right? And the fans have every right to have an opinion. That’s why they’re fans. They have every right,” Judge said.
“You buy a ticket, come to the stadium, you have every right to boo me going out of the stadium. That’s the way it is. That’s what we sign up for, right? And it’s New York. It’s supposed to be a tough place to be. Certain cities in this country, they don’t even know if their teams playing today. All right? So you sign up for a job in a city like New York, you expect to have this. I never shied away from that.”
Transparency
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“You guys always want to know what the hell we talk about all the time, I’ll tell you pointblank what it is. All right, when the guys come to work on Wednesday, okay, and they bust their butt for you, and turn around on Thursday, and they’re all committed doing extras in position units, doing extras individually to get their body right, they’re doing everything going forward, okay, and they go out there and practice with good energy, good enthusiasm, and you know you’re in the right position right there, okay, you know you got that aspect going right there,” Judge said.
“I talk to the players all the time, guys. I talk to them very openly and transparently. We don’t even know have captains because a majority of our captains are no longer playing for the remainder of the season, so we do a leadership meeting now. I look at the guys at the end of the day and say, Guys, hey, listen, this is your time to talk to me, you speak for the team. You tell me what’s going on. You tell me, How’s the team? How’s the beat of the team? What do I got to be aware of? What’s something I don’t know? Because everyone always tells me what I want to hear, right?
“So I ask someone just individually, I ask a player, they’re going to tell me whatever I want to hear. I ask a coach the same type of thing. All right, I got to have a group of players who are going to look me in the eye, and they know I can tell Joe what exactly the hell is going on. So I got that core group of guys, right?”
No golf clubs in the locker-room
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“Everybody on the team is locked in. Everyone on the team comes in to work. Everybody comes in every week and is committed to doing it the right way and playing together as a team. Okay? There’s a lot of teams right now that are out of playoff contention,” Judge said. “Okay, whether it’s golf clubs in the locker room, or people planning vacations outside of it. All right, there’s a lot of finger pointing and blaming and shouting. All that type of stuff, right, all that stuff.
“You know what we (don’t) have in our building, any of that. We don’t got any of that. Any of that. Our guys know we have one more week this year to be this team. They know we have one more week this year to be this team. And they expect me to show up and give every ounce of football that I got in me this next week. You got that? They’re getting everything out of me. But I expect the same in return. And I just told them that a second ago. That’s what I expect. The expectation here is I expect every ounce of football you got inside of you. Okay?”
Shading Pat Shurmur
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“When I came here and I sat down with all the players, I wanted to know what it was like in here, what we had to change from their mouths, all right, to a man every player looked me in the eye and said, Joe, it’s not a team, they don’t play hard, we’re out of playoffs, everybody quit, everybody tapped, they stopped showing up to captains meetings, all that stuff. Right? They tapped out. Okay?” Judge said.
Almost fired in 2018?
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“Let me tell you something right now, all right, in 2018, I was a part of a team who halfway through the season (6-2 record), all right, we were all pretty convinced we were getting fired,” Judge said. “We didn’t think we were going to make the playoffs, had no concept of anything was coming, we just showed up and kept improving to work week after week. And on the outside, we were we all terrible. But we didn’t care about that any of that noise on the outside. We didn’t care about it at all. What do you care about on the inside, what are you doing? They showed up, they fought, they worked. We were improving as a team and put things together, and make a run and, you know, ended up winning the championship.”
Vegas rushes to pay people
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“You know what, though, (the players) play every play with enthusiasm, every play with energy. Every play with each other. I want them to celebrate that. I want to see that energy and passion. That’s how they practice every day. Okay? I want to see them play that way as well,” Judge said. “That last fourth down they stopped them on, that’s two games in a row where the game was over, we’re out, it’s done. Vegas is already paying out people. Like, that’s done. All right? But that’s two fourth downs in a row, two weeks in a row, that I’m sitting there and watching our defense finish the way they got to finish.”
No clown show organization
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“So this ain’t a team that’s having fistfights on the sidelines. This ain’t some clown show organization or something else,” Judge said. “You talk about the foundation built, you talk about the things that — the toughest thing to change in a team, the toughest thing to change in a club is the way people think. You understand that? That’s the toughest thing. You can get new players, you can’t get out of your damn locker room all you want, you got to change how people thinking.”
Fans given the green light to boo
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“But I guarantee you this, those men are going to walk in on Wednesday and be ready to roll. We’re going to practice hard on Wednesday, we’re going to practice hard on Thursday, and we’re going to practice hard on Friday. Okay? And we’re going to play for each other on the field next week. If we don’t play well, every fan has the right to boo my ass out of the stadium. You got that?” Judge said.
Dozens of emails
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“And I get about a dozen e-mails a day, all right, six of which ask me exactly what you’re asking, the other six offer full support the other way. Okay? To me, both are great. Both are great. Okay? Both are great,” Judge said.
No golf clubs in the locker-room, Part 2
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“Talking about building from the ground up, building the right thing. Okay. Now, you guys ain’t been in the building for two years now with this coach, right, but I’ll tell you right now, all right, if you’re in the damn building, you walk on through our locker room, you ain’t seeing that crap you saw before. All right? You ain’t seeing guys planning vacations, you ain’t seeing golf clubs in front of players’ locker. You ain’t seeing that stuff. Okay? You ain’t seeing it,” Judge said.
Giants headed in right direction
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“So I can go through a whole Xs and Os evaluation, I can go through a roster evaluation, I do it every day myself. I go through all that stuff. But in terms of the next step to take, I can tell you right now, okay, I know we’re a whole lot closer where we’re going than further away. I can tell you that right now,” Judge said.
Players begging to return
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“I can tell you we got more players here who are going to be free agents next year, all right, who are in my office every day begging to come back. Okay? I know that,” Judge said.
Players wishing they could return
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“(There are players) who we coached last year that still calling me twice a week talking about how much they wish they were still here and they’re getting paid more somewhere else. Okay? So I know we’ve got the right foundational pieces there,” Judge said. “I know we have some players in key positions who are guys that you can build with and keep carrying on. All right? I know we got the right temperament. I know we got the right culture in terms of teaching the players.”
A shot at Rob Sale?
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“I don’t come up here and try to assassinate some player because I think it’s going to save my [expletive]. Okay? Because behind closed doors, we shut those doors, I can tell every player, to a man, look them in the eye and tell him exactly what the hell he screwed up, exactly how it’s got to get fixed, I got to tell him to hold him as accountable as can be,” Judge said. “Because I ain’t going to sit up here like some other cowards sitting behind the mic and put his players on blast. Okay?”
Patience or not?
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“But, look, I’m not asking you to be patient. Trust me, guys. I’m not the most patient guy myself. I’m committed. I’m committed. All right? But I’m not the most patient guy myself. All right?” Judge said. “But I am proud of the way these guys continue to fight and the effort they play with, all right, and the way they grind it out. Okay? But, again, the toughest thing to turn over in a program, the toughest to change is how people think, okay, how they think. And we got guys that are wired the right way. Okay, they’re wired the right way.”
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