Giants coach Joe Judge ready to launch offseason program for tech-savvy players
Giants coach Joe Judge speaks at his introductory press conference at MetLife Stadium on Jan. 9. Credit: Corey Sipkin
The Giants' coaches have been working the last few weeks on figuring out how to go about their online offseason program, which begins on Monday.
The players? They’ve been working on it their whole lives without even knowing it.
Having a roster filled with screen-staring, device-draining, online-obsessed, app-addicted players normally would be something that teams frown upon. Those gizmos and gadgets are distractions from the work that goes into shaping a team, so much so that for some organizations, some of the steepest fines stem from buzzers going off in meetings or contraband cellphones.
This spring, though, all of those tools and skills that the players, mostly young men in their 20s, grew up using are coming in handy. With the Giants unable to gather in person at the facility for the traditional offseason workouts, those skills that once were annoyances have become valuable assets.
“Look, we have technology that is allowing us to be very functional and productive,” Joe Judge said in a conference call on Wednesday. “The one thing I am very confident in is that when we start dealing with the players, there is no generation of players that is more prepared for this offseason than the ones we’re going to be dealing with now. They are very technologically savvy. They are going to give a lot of feedback that we’ll get from them that we’ll rely on in terms of how we can improve our meetings and do what helps them.”
It should be said, too, that having a 38-year-old head coach whose young kids sit at the kitchen table each day doing virtual schoolwork on platforms similar to what the Giants will use . . . a man who is well-versed in online learning because his mother is the principal of an elementary school . . . a student himself who is a dissertation short of a doctorate in education . . . could be an advantage as well.
The Giants didn’t know any of that would come in handy when they hired Judge in January.
Now? It’s almost as if he’s the ideal head coach for this less-than-ideal situation.
There are many who have posited that the five new head coaches in the NFL, including Judge, will be at a disadvantage when it comes to installing their schemes and philosophies. That may have a ring of truth to it, but Judge said that is an overblown excuse.
“Look, the advantage goes to whoever is best prepared from this point forward,” he said. “I don’t think any established program will have an advantage over anybody else. It’s how you can find a way to communicate with your players and deliver a message. Whether you have been in a program for years or not, everyone has changes to their system, everybody has changes to what they are doing in the offseason, and they’re going to have the same challenge of communicating that to their players.”
The Giants will embrace their specific challenges on Monday. That’s when all of the players on the roster and all of the coaches on the staff will be able to log on and interact with each other for the very first time.
The first lessons will be on simply using the interface and software, not the playbook. They’ll start in small groups with position coaches and move to larger groups with coordinators. Then, finally, Judge will have a chance to address the entire team.
“All we’re concerned about right now is getting the foundation right through whatever means that ends up being,” Judge said. “Before we get into all the X's-and-O's of football, there is an important element of just getting to know the players and them getting along that has to take place.”
As for how long this way of coaching football will last, that depends more on society and government regulations than anything Judge can determine. The NFL and NFLPA hammered out the plans for the virtual offseason earlier this week, and it extends only as far as May 15. At that point, the league will reassess whether players will be allowed to travel to facilities where on-field interactions can safely take place.
“We’ve made four calendars already in anticipation of different scenarios that could come up,” judge said of the remainder of the offseason, which usually includes OTAs and a mandatory minicamp. “We’ve got them color-coded. If we get the players as scheduled [in mid-May] we’re working off a blue calendar. If we don’t get the players at all, we’re working off a red calendar. If we get them later in the spring, we can pull out the purple calendar. We’ve got different scenarios mapped out so we have a plan of attack when the time comes.”
Until then, the Giants will have to be relying more on their online abilities than their o-line abilities.
“Listen, we’re all kind of tapping our foot right now just to be able to have any kind of exposure to players that we can,” Judge said. “When we start going virtually, that can give you a great insight into players in terms of how they interact in meetings, how insightful they are with the questions they ask, how current they can stay on the information. That’s what we’re really waiting for.”
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
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