It’s nearing the end of June and team minicamps are winding down. The pace is slower, which means there’s more time for different types of stories, like Pro Football Network ranking the worst coaching hires in NFL history.
It should come as no surprise that the New York Giants have a mistake bad enough to land them on this list. It’s really more of a, “which coach would they pick” rather than if they would make the list at all.
That said, the Giants landed with the sixth worst coaching hire in NFL history when they inked Joe Judge in 2020.
In the ranking, PFN cites Judge as “another former Patriots assistant who unraveled after leaving Belichick’s side.” The other assistant they refer is Matt Patricia, who landed at seven on the list.
The article also references how everyone thought Judge’s job was safe until the final game of the season when the game ended with two quarterback sneak play calls on second-and-11 and third-and-9 while backed up against their own goal line.
A 10-23 overall record tells the story of Judge’s tenure with the Giants, but so does one specific play from the end of his stint with Big Blue.
In what ended up being Judge’s final game as New York’s head coach (the 2021 regular-season finale), Judge called for consecutive quarterback sneaks on 2nd-and-11 and 3rd-and-9 while the Giants were backed up against their own goal line. New York had no faith it could execute even a basic offensive play, a terrible reflection on its head coach.
Although every pre-Week 17 report had suggested Judge’s job was safe, the Giants fired him after that cowardly display. Belichick then shockingly tasked Judge and Patricia with overhauling the Patriots’ 2022 offense, and we know how that went.
Those two play calls reflected so poorly on Judge (along with his viral postgame meltdown in Week 17) that the Giants decided to fire him even though there were no previous indications that would happen.
Even when Judge was hired in 2020, many questioned the decision and none were surprised by his firing. But now the question remains: Will Brian Daboll meet this same fate as a former Belichick assistant?
