When a rookie head coach takes over a terrible NFL team, he often preaches patience and process. Then when his team continues to lose, he keeps belching bromides until, hopefully, his club starts winning.
But Joe Judge didn't do that. Even though we saw real improvement from the New York Giants, they were 1-7 halfway through the season, and just one game better than the Jets, perhaps the worst NFL team since the merger. Judge didn't lean on the twin crutches of COVID-19 or the microscopic practice time it allowed. If ever a neophyte NFL coach had excuses for his team's poor play, it was on that solemn night in November when they lost by two points to Tampa Bay, and latched like a barnacle to the bottom of the NFC East.
Instead of feeling sorry for himself, or highlighting the very grim and dim realities that have kept him from coaching his club in full, Judge offered no cover for himself or his players. He spoke and acted like someone acutely aware of the cutthroat calculus of the NFL, and as someone in charge of a playoff contender.
And just one month later, he is.
The Giants just pulled off the biggest upset of the NFL season, shocking the Seahawks in Seattle, and reducing NFL MVP frontrunner Russell Wilson into an average quarterback. They not only pulled off the shocker in Seattle, but Big Blue also did it without their starting quarterback, Daniel Jones, and their best player, Saquon Barkley. They did it with ingenious defense, some big-time runs by Wayne Gallman Jr., and a few clutch throws by backup QB Colt McCoy, who just notched his first win since 2014 – 2,232 days, to be exact.
It was Big Blue's fourth straight win, and their first such streak in four years. And while we can give a nod to McCoy, a tip of the cap to Gallman, or a salute to the Giants defense that bewildered Wilson all afternoon, perhaps most praise should go to the 38-year-old head coach who was a special teams coordinator just last year. He has turned this tanker around, in the marsh of the Meadowlands, and now has the 5-7 Giants sailing to first place in their division.
Cynics asserted that the Giants were merely mauling the tomato cans of the league, beating Washington, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati by a combined 15 points. But they were double-digit underdogs to the Seahawks, a club considered true contenders in the savage NFC West, if not for the Super Bowl.
Wilson was playing out of his mind while leading an offense averaging just under 30 points per game. But the Giants defense, getting better by the week, stifled Seattle's nuclear attack to just 12 points, and held the absurdly fast and muscular DK Metcalf, arguably the league’s top wideout, to 80 yards on five catches. It may have been the first time all year that Russell Wilson looked so confused by an opposing defense, and out of the minefield of an NFC West schedule, it was the forgotten Giants who held the mighty Seahawks (8-4) to their lowest point total of the season.
This win did more than extend a streak, or commandeer the water cooler chat, or make the G-Men the flavor of the moment. It's proof that the Giants are climbing back up the rungs of relevance, are morphing into a serious team, and are a bona fide playoff contender. And if we are to give one man the credit, he won't be wearing cleats. Joe Judge has handled distractions with aplomb, has muted discord like a coach 20 years his senior, and has kept the same, low-key regularity through it all. And now he has them in one formerly faraway place - first place.
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