UPDATE: Within 10 minutes of posting this article, the Giants announced that they fired Joe Judge.
After another disappointing season for the New York Giants, finishing in last place in the NFC East with a record of 4-13 and a 61-100 record since winning Super Bowl XLVI, New York finds themselves in another awkward position. Big Blue announced on Monday that General Manager Dave Gettleman was retiring. This announcement rubbed me the wrong way because while I understand that he is a cancer survivor, 70 years old and had been with the organization from the beginning, he had no right to be able to walk into the sunset on his own terms after finishing with a record of 19-46 in four years with the Giants. When Jerry Reese was towards the end of his tenure with the Giants, John Mara fired him during the middle of the season and he also had been with the organization for a long time and the team won two Super Bowls with him in charge. The Giants also came across as tone deaf this past Sunday when they allowed Gettleman to get a nice goodbye by allowing him to take pictures with his family on the sideline during pregame warmups. To make things worse, Gettleman left the game early and did not say anything to the media on his way out. That was the Gettleman era with the Giants in a nutshell because he started with the attitude that he was the smartest person in the room and never took accountability for the mistakes made, and he ended it the same way.
The attention now turns to head coach Joe Judge, who in two years as the Giants head coach has a record of 10-23. Beyond the poor record, Judge comes across as a coach that talks tough but coaches extremely soft. The obvious example is in week 18 versus the Washington Football Team, when the Giants were backed up to their own end zone and opted to call back-to-back quarterback sneaks on second and third down. That right there made it seem like Judge gave up on his offense, especially since he had a quarterback in Jake Fromm that does not deserve to be in the NFL. Judge also has egg on his face when it appeared that the Giants were going to bring him back for a third year until he went on an 11 minute rant in front of the media after an embarrassing loss to a bad Chicago Bears team. Here he claimed that there are current and former players that beg him every day that they either want to come back to, or stay with, the Giants. He also went on to call out the Washington Football Team and coach Ron Rivera because some of their players had been fighting on the sideline, as well as former Giants coach Pat Shurmur because the team quit on him even though they won two of their last three games of that season. That press conference alone came across as a coach that was either trying to get fired or was so desperate that he was talking directly to John Mara to plead his case as to why he should be retained for another year.
The Giants now find themselves setting up interviews with candidates for the GM opening. As of press time New York has requested to interview Cardinals vice president of pro personnel Adrian Wilson, Titans vice president of personnel Ryan Cowden and director of player personnel Monti Ossenfort, who joined Tennessee in 2020 after spending more than a decade with the New England Patriots and crossed paths with Joe Judge during his time there. New York also put in requests to interview 49ers assistant GM Adam Peters and director of player personnel Ran Carthen, Bills assistant GM Joe Schoen and Chiefs executive director of player personnel Ryan Poles. It has been reported that New York’s assistant GM Kevin Abrams is not expected to interview for the opening.
The Giants met with Judge on Monday afternoon and have still not made a decision and have not answered to any of the reports that say Judge’s job is in jeopardy. The only possible explanation as to why New York has not made a decision yet would be if they were to hire the new GM first, and let him evaluate the team on his own and decide Judge’s fate. While the Giants may also be hesitant to fire Judge because it would be the third straight coach to be fired after only two years, they already embarrassed themselves by taking this long to make a decision along with Judge embarrassing the organization with his ignorant comments in his recent postgame press conferences. Judge made the decision for Mara through his press conferences behavior lately and all Mara has to do now is make it official.
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