Joe Judge can try to spin it, but the Giants are awful
Giants head coach Joe Judge watches an extra point attempt by the Chargers during the first quarter at SoFi Stadium on Dec. 12, 2021 in Inglewood, Calif. Credit: Getty Images/Harry How
INGLEWOOD, Calif.
It’s one thing to be bad, which the Giants have been for most of the decade.
It’s quite another to be unwatchable, pathetic and irrelevant, which is what they’ve become as their nightmare year devolves into a carcass to be picked over by opposing teams feasting on their dysfunction.
This is a team that has crossed the threshold into the territory where only the worst reside.
Coach Joe Judge thought he’d have his team revitalized after spending the week in the desert heat of Tucson between trips to Miami and Los Angeles. If anything, the Giants came out of their trip even worse than when it began. After a lackluster 20-9 loss to the Dolphins in Miami, they were demolished by the Chargers, 37-21, on Sunday at SoFi Stadium.
The Giants aren’t simply bad. They’re terrible. And they show no signs of emerging from a decade’s worth of futility since their fourth Super Bowl run, that magnificent January-into-February stretch in 2012 that now feels light years in the past because of how rotten they’ve been ever since.
Yet somehow, some way, Judge says he still sees progress from a group that has gotten worse as the season has gone on. At 4-9 with four games left, it feels as if they won’t get another win the rest of the way. Judge, however, says he still believes there is a bright side here.
"There’s a lot of things I see week after week," he said after Sunday’s game. "There are some key foundational pieces . . . We’re going to finish everything. We’re not going to quit. We’re not going to give up."
He lauded his team for the way it fought hard despite being down in the fourth quarter.
Oh, come on.
The Giants trailed 37-7 late in the fourth quarter before scoring two touchdowns in garbage time to get within 16 points and recovering an onside kick after the second score. Sorry, that game was out of reach. The Giants had no chance to catch up after the Chargers took their foot off the gas by taking Justin Herbert out of the game. They had built a 30-point lead on his 1-yard touchdown pass to Jared Cook with 9:28 left in the fourth quarter.
"There’s a lot that I’m encouraged by," Judge said. "Sometimes it’s tough to see, but there are some key foundational pieces that are being put in place. I talk about putting the foundation together. I don’t take shortcuts. In terms of the big scope, internally, you see a lot of pieces being put together and a lot of the culture, the foundation of the program."
Enough.
This team is brutal, and there are few obvious signs that it will get better anytime soon. Judge operates as if he will get more time to see his vision through, but there are certain to be sweeping offseason changes. That includes the likely retirement of general manager Dave Gettleman, who has done a woeful job of roster-building since taking over in 2018. And if the team continues to perform the way it did on Sunday and loses the rest of its games, Judge might be swept aside, too.
He’s 4-9 after going 6-10 in 2020, and there simply isn’t a lot to grab onto here. Yes, quarterback Daniel Jones has missed the last two games because of a neck injury, but Judge won a key game last year with backup Colt McCoy in Seattle, so he has managed without Jones before. Mike Glennon is 0-2 in Jones’ absence and shows no command of an offense that has been mostly brutal all season.
And it’s not as if the Chargers are the ’85 Bears. In fact, this had been a Jekyll-and-Hyde team the last several weeks, failing to put together two straight wins in looking alternately terrific and mediocre. But after last week’s 41-22 upset of the Bengals in Cincinnati, one of their most dominant performances of the season, they poured it on against a hopelessly overmatched Giants team that simply is not functional.
Herbert is the Chargers’ latter-day version of Dan Fouts, and he picked apart the Giants’ defense the way his Hall of Fame predecessor carved up opponents a generation ago.
The Giants, meanwhile, continue to go nowhere, and Judge continues to spin a line that is getting harder and harder to swallow as the losses mount.
"The reality is you work the entire year-round for 17 Sundays," he said. "You have to earn the right to have Sundays beyond that."
They are far, far away from earning that right. As far as they have been since the last time they earned pro football’s ultimate prize.
Bob Glauber retired in 2022 after covering the NFL for nearly 40 years. He was selected in 2021 for the Bill Nunn Career Achievement Award by the Pro Football Writers of America, and is a three-time winner of the New York State Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. President of the PFWA for the 2018-20 seasons, he is the author of “The Forgotten First” and “Guts and Genius.”
