Joe Judge preaching discipline in Giants practices
Sterling Shepard during Giants training camp on Thursday. Credit: Matthew Swensen
Sterling Shepard made the catch of the practice on Thursday, hauling in a deep pass from Daniel Jones while safety Julian Love closed in on him. As Shepard was coming back to his feet he launched the football toward the end zone in celebration.
It was a short-lived one.
Joe Judge immediately made Shepard retrieve the ball and called him in for a lecture.
“Look, every practice is a mini-game,” Judge said after the workout. “You have to learn from the experiences going forward. He made a tremendous play on the play and then he threw the ball. That’s a 15-yard penalty. We’re going to have the ball on the 10-yard line, the penalty is going to put us on the 25-yard line. That’s not something that we’re not going to accept from any player on the team. It’s a learning lesson that he’s got to take and go forward. But it’s important that everybody else learns from that same lesson that we don’t have to repeat the mistake.”
A contrite Shepard said he had no issues with having to bring the ball back to the field of play himself, nor with the message Judge passed along to him.
“It would have been a 15-yard penalty in a game and that’s what he told me,” Shepard said. “I thought about it and that is true. When you make a big play at practice, you tend to do stuff that you might not do in a real game. But that’s stuff that we have to keep in mind. Sometimes, emotions get high in a game. Yeah, I need to think about those things before I do them.”
It was just the latest example of Judge’s coaching style.
“You have to take coaching in every way, shape and form,” Shepard said. “I need somebody to stay on me. You never have it figured out. That’s something that we learned in our team meeting yesterday. You can be a 10-year vet and think you have everything figured out, but you really don’t. It keeps you grounded. I appreciate having a coach like coach Judge.”
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.
