Former New York Giants head coach Joe Judge is expected to be named an assistant head coach of the New England Patriots, reports NFL insider Albert Breer.
Jobs shaking out in NE, and here's a big one—Joe Judge will be in an ass't head coach role with the @Patriots in '23 (with personnel elements/some parallels to Matt Patricia's '21 role), per sources.
On-field, he'll work closely with Cam Achord and Joe Houston on special teams.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) March 23, 2023
Judge spent two seasons as head coach of the Giants, both of which were epic fails and the nail in the coffin of the Dave Gettleman era. In 2020, the Giants went 6-10 and in 2021, the year Saquon Barkley tore his ACL, the team went 4-13.
Prior to joining the Giants, Judge spent eight years under Bill Belichick as part of his special team’s staff. After leaving the Giants in 2021, Judge returned to the Patriots as the quarterbacks coach/offensive assistant.
As an assistant head coach in 2023, Judge will work more closely with special teams.
“I think people are making the mistake of looking at this as like all of a sudden now he’s second in command in the organization. He isn’t,” Breer told Trenni Casey on “Early Edition.” “I think this should be taken very literally that he’s going to be taking things off of Bill’s plate in some ways. It’s gonna be like the role that Matt Patricia served in two years ago in 2021 in that he’s gonna be a liaison between scouting and coaching. He’s gonna have some head coach-like duties to what he does. And part of that I think is gonna be to free Bill up to do a little bit more.
“And then another part of his job is gonna be to oversee the special teams. I think we can all agree that the special teams were a huge problem last year and maybe a bigger problem than they’ve been at any point in Bill Belichick’s 23 years in New England. And so, I think, the way you want to look at this is, it’s very literally assistant head coach. It’s like taking things off of Bill’s plate, serving in a lot of different ways, and trying to make the operation as a whole run a little smoother.”
In other words, Judge is really more of an assistant to the head coach.
Even the Patriots, who have had Judge under their wing for 10 years, have learned that he’s a great used car salesman but have kept him firmly in Belichick’s grasp. It’s almost like they understand that he needs more time to learn what it takes to fully run a football program.
It’s too bad the Giants had to be the guinea pig.
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