NFL Open Thread: Judge lest ye be coached by Judge edition
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Steven Ruiz has a good roundup of the coaching hotseat, and we’ll jump to the most ridiculous (and amazingly perhaps the most likely on the list to be back next year unless the Vikings make the playoffs):
A lot of people doubted Giants GM Dave Gettleman in January 2020 when he hired an unknown special teams coordinator away from the Patriots to be his head coach. And, well … Judge has spent the past two years making those people look awfully smart for questioning the hire. The Giants are 10-18 under his watch, and the team has regressed in his second year at the helm. We’ve gotten to the point where losing to this team leads to a complete meltdown for opposing fan bases.
The Chiefs actually beat the Giants in Week 8, and we still got a bunch of articles questioning what’s wrong with Kansas City in the days that followed. It’s gotten that bad.
Since Judge took over the team, he’s acted like a bizzaro Ted Lasso who’s hellbent on crushing the morale of his locker room. Surprisingly, none of his coaching clichés, extra laps for mistakes as simple as committing a penalty in practice, and excessive disciplinary measures have led to more winning. It’s like Judge studied all the reasons Bill Belichick’s assistants have failed as head coaches and concluded that he had to lean into the bit even more. You know what Matt Patricia’s problem was in Detroit? He didn’t alienate his players enough.
Giants fans should have known they were in trouble the moment that Judge hired Jason Garrett to run the offense. You know, the same Jason Garrett who was fired as the Cowboys head coach largely because he clung to an outdated offense that doesn’t fit the modern NFL. New York needed an offensive mind who could get the most out of a quarterback who gets worse the longer he holds the ball and a dynamic but somewhat unorthodox group of skill-position players. Garrett might have been the worst possible candidate for that job.
One more thing: Even though Judge has a background as a special teams coach, the Giants special teams haven’t even been that good! New York ranked 12th in special teams DVOA last season, and ranks 11th in 2021. Those are decent results, but this is supposed to be his thing! What exactly does this guy bring to the table?
Maybe Judge deserves another season under a different general manager. Maybe one from the New England system whose roster-building plan more closely aligns with Judge’s philosophy. But given everything we know about Judge as a coach, is that really something the Giants want? I’d say no.
Judge, like most school-from-the-school-they-tore-down-to-build-the-old-school tough guys, is a complete chickenshit when it comes to 4th down:
It’s fourth-and-short in the opponent’s territory. Do you know what your head coach is doing?
If that coach is Joe Judge, he is probably ordering a punt. Or settling for a field goal. Or making another decision more likely to result in a narrow Giants loss than a narrow Giants victory.
Judge is among the worst fourth-down decision makers in the N.F.L., according to most analytical models. The EdjSports Critical Call Index, which calculates win probabilities based on the possible outcomes of every fourth-down decision, ranks Judge 27th overall. ESPN Stats and Info ranked Judge 28th overall entering Week 13.
The Giants’ 20-9 loss to the Miami Dolphins on Sunday provided multiple examples of Judge’s overconservative, counterproductive decision making. The Giants punted on fourth-and-3 from the Dolphins’ 47-yard line early in the game, on fourth-and-4 from the Dolphins’ 48-yard line with the score tied late in the second quarter and on fourth-and-2 from the Dolphins’ 46-yard line while trailing by 4 points late in the third quarter.
Your father’s high school coach, who believed the forward pass was invented by hippie subversives, may have approved of the punts, but all three were mistakes, according to the EdjSports model. Judge cost the Giants 4.5 percentage points of win probability. That may not sound like much, but the Giants did not have very much win probability to squander, particularly with a backup, Mike Glennon, at quarterback.
[…]
Judge is unlikely to be swayed by statistical arguments. He harrumphed about analytics when confronted about his proclivity for punting after the loss to the Falcons. “You can look at a stat sheet all you want,” he said. “I promise you, if Excel was going to win football games, Bill Gates would be killing it right now.”
What a wit!
It’s amazing how reliably Belichick disciples embody a caricature of his blunt disciplinarianism, while actively rejecting everything else about how he coaches. But Judge is the perfect coach for an ownership whose offeason priority was getting more arbitrary taunting penalties called.