There was no 11-minute rant from Giants head coach Joe Judge on Sunday, as he was a little more succinct in his postgame speech about both the season-ending loss to Washington and the team’s 4-13 campaign as a whole.
“Obviously, we didn't do enough to have success today on the field. Obviously, (Washington) played better, made plays when they had to.
There were some things that we could do in the game better to give us a better chance. Ultimately, it wasn't good enough,” Judge said, before segueing into more of a post-mortem: “I'm proud of the team for things they've done and fought through and stayed together as a team this year. Ultimately, it's not good enough. The fans deserve better. It doesn't meet our expectations as a program. It's not going to be acceptable and the things we have to correct we're going to start on immediately going forward in the future and start on next season.”
At the top of the list for Judge is “a number of things,” but foremost, the Giants need to improve an offense that was mediocre at best in the best of times, and saw its leader in yards from scrimmage barely crack 850.
“We’ll get into the evaluation process and get into that, but obviously, we have to have better offensive production,” Judge said. “There’s a number of other things on the list, but I don't think it takes much thinking to go ahead and list the offensive production as an obvious thing we've got to correct immediately around here.”
For weeks, and really all season, Judge has said that the team’s effort is superb, even if results are subpar, and that “we’re closer than we are further away.” That quote was his exact wording once again after Sunday’s game, but even though he acknowledged his epic and oft-replayed rant, he was rather mum on what that actually means as we head into the offseason.
“I tell you the truth – I told you last week that I know we're closer than we are further away, and I'll leave it at that,” Judge said. “I know the targets of things we have to fix. We have to get moving in the right direction. I talked last week at length, which I'm sure everybody here has listened to several times by now, about the things that are going in the right direction in this program. We have to build on those things. And the things we have to fix, we have to fix immediately. That's just the nature of what it's going to be.”
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Despite nothing being named specifically (outside of the offense), the truth is that the Giants lost six straight to end the season and seven of eight after their bye, turning what was a 3-7 team with a little optimism in early November into a 4-13 mess come January.
One might think it’s a relief to end the misery, but Judge had a different take: 31 teams end the year miserable anyway, so no matter when or how the season ends, there’s a 95 percent chance it’s not the way you wanted it to.
“The funny thing about this is there's only one team every year, no matter what the results are, that has a happy ending to their season.
That's just the reality of it, that it’s a crash landing for 31 teams,” Judge said. “When you get into the stretch of the season, it's a long season, it's a grinding season. You build relationships and you go through all the grind with a lot of players that you really build and support and really rely on each other. At the end of anything like this, I don't think there's ever for any feeling of relief to be done for those 31 other teams.”
Sunday could’ve potentially been Judge’s swan song as Giants coach, but that’s a hypothetical. What’s not a hypothetical is that he knew officially for a couple weeks that it was the end of this season, but he didn't want anyone on the team to think Sunday was just a formality.
“I know for me personally it doesn't matter what the situation: you're playing to keep advancing and get to the final, whatever it may be,” he said. “Mentally, you're always trying to stretch it out. When you walk in every week, you're thinking, 'Okay, this could be my last opportunity to coach a guy on a Wednesday, a Thursday, a Friday.' You're trying to extend those things, trying to make sure you don't waste those opportunities. Personally, that's how I feel. It's how I've felt in every postseason game I've ever played and in every finale, including this year.”
Whether or not Judge has more Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays ahead in New York, he knows not everyone who took the field Sunday will – and that’s why he made sure he tried to keep anyone and everyone on the roster from feeling like the season finale wasn't meaningful.
“You look at guys and there are a lot of guys that you know are not under contract. There's a business element to this. You don't have a crystal ball and know exactly what the future holds, but you look at those guys that you obviously have strong ties to and bonds to and you try to soak up every second you get with those guys,” Judge said. “You want to see them have success, so you want to make sure you do everything you can to give them an opportunity to get their hard work rewarded. That's a big part of it.”
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