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The empty seats should have screamed from the top of their lungs to Giants ownership about the sorry state of the franchise and about the head coach who just finished giving them and their fan base a clown show of a season.
On a gray and gloomy day at a place that turned into MetLibrary Stadium — interrupted four times by Bronx cheers for an obscure offensive tackle named Korey Cunningham announced as eligible and the obligatory boo birds for a clown-show offense, and … this just in, a Jake Fromm 22-yard TD pass to Darius Slayton — the winds of change and outrage howled in the direction of John Mara and Steve Tisch.
There will be a new GM to replace Dave Gettleman, and that new GM should have the power to hire his own head coach.
Joe must go.
Clean house.
Those weren’t Steve Cohen’s Mets, nor was that Julius Randle giving Joe Judge the ’ole thumbs-down on Sunday.
If they were the ones who do the hiring and firing for the New York Football Giants, then Judge’s key card won’t be working in the near future.
He was fortunate that so many Giants fans stayed away from Washington 22, Giants 7 … although there was one fan speaking for a whole lot of them who wore a brown paper bag over his head with the words Joe Judge Fan Club written on it with an empty medium Pepsi bottle attached.
The jury’s verdict on Judge: Guilty.
Guilty in the court of public opinion.
Joe must go.
“Ultimately, it’s not good enough,” Judge said.
“The fans deserve better.”
You are what your record says you are, not what the head coach says you are. Or one day might be.
The Giants are 4-13, and Judge’s case for keeping his job could be crystallized in an incomprehensible series during which Jake Fromm ran a keeper on second-and-11 from the 3-yard line out of the Victory Formation and again on third-and-9.
This is what Judge said two Januarys ago when Mara and Tisch gazed up at him and fantasized about the young Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin:
“What I’m about is an old-school, physical mentality. We’re going to put a product on the field that the people of this city and this region can be proud of because this team will represent this area. We will play fast, we’ll play downhill, we’ll play aggressive. We’ll punch you in the nose for 60 minutes.”
This is what he said after the bitter end:
“We were gonna give ourselves room for the punt.”
While most of the rest of the league is driving a Tesla, the Giants for what seems like an eternity have been driving a broken-done Edsel. Or a Big Blue horse-and-buggy.
The boobirds aren’t the barometer for ownership as much as apathy is for a team that lost its last six games in inexcusable fashion and finished 4-13.
“The crowd is our customers,” the late, great Wellington Mara said late in the 2003 season. “When they leave it’s the same as someone calling up or writing and saying you’re not doing what it is I want you to do … the message comes across loud and clear. All it tells me is that we need to improve the product.”
There has been a disturbing disconnect between what Judge insists he sees in the locker room and in the meeting rooms and on the practice field Monday through Saturday and what Giants fans cringe at on game day.
You don’t tell us this ain’t no clown-show organization, you show us.
The fan base for the most part is mad as hell and can’t take it anymore. And who can blame them?
The part that Judge got right long before his infamous 11-minute rant was this: “We have to have success. It’s a production business.”
Judge’s production business after two seasons stands at 10-23. Who was it that said, “Winning isn’t everything, but it’s the only thing?”
Judge happens to be a fountain of football knowledge. A sharp football guy. When the 2020 season ended, the Giants brass was convinced that he was the CEO and leader they had craved since the end of the Coughlin Era. Mara as late as midseason continued to believe that he was the right coach. Gettleman believed that Judge would get more out of his young draft picks than Pat Shurmur did. Nick Saban and Bill Belichick protege and all that.
But the culture, oh that culture: There were no fights on the Giants sidelines. Not one. And Judge was too busy to field calls or texts from former Giants players begging him to return.
Whatever he has been selling, either players haven’t been buying, or the coaches Judge hired weren’t the teachers he vowed he would hire … before firing OL coach Marc Colombo last season and OC Jason Garrett this season.
Once Daniel Jones went down, there is an argument that Judge can make that he basically had one hand tied behind his back. But the abject lack of competitiveness is unacceptable. How is it possible that $72 million man Kenny Golladay failed to catch a TD pass?
“Probably this year some of the things I learned is more what not to do,” Judge said. “You touch that hot plate, you learn it’s hot, are you gonna touch that thing again?”
He talked his way into the job two years ago. What can he say now to the owners to keep it? How can they sell him to the paying public now? Is he the only one who sees progress?
“It’s always a crash landing except for one team,” Judge said.
But some crash landings are worse than others. The Giants’ last four crash landings translate to 22 wins against 59 losses, and there is a degree of collateral damage that he is paying for now. But Judge was hired to shepherd the Giants in the right direction. Too many Giants fans have lost faith in him. Are mad as hell and can’t take it anymore. And who can blame them?
Broken team. Broken promises.
Joe must go.
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