The New York Giants have been one of the more active teams so far in the offseason. Without an abundant amount of cap space, the team was able to sign Kenny Golladay, Kyle Rudolph, Adoree Jackson, re-sign Leonard Williams and more. While all of this is great, something better happened to the franchise, players now want to come play for the New York Giants, and a big reason for this is second year head coach Joe Judge.
The Giants have not been doing well record wise since 2016. After consecutive losing seasons with Pat Shurmur leading the team, GM Dave Gettleman decided to move on. Last January, Joe Judge was named the new head coach of the Giants. At the time of the hire not many fans really knew who he was. However, after just one year, it is fair to say that it was a tremendous hire. The Giants did not make the playoffs, or have a winning record. However it was easy to see that the team was playing much better, and more importantly they were playing harder, and made almost every game pretty competitive.
The Giants ended up with a 6-10 record, while finishing the year on a pretty high note. In the offseason the team was expected to try and re-sign Leonard Williams and/or Dalvin Tomlinson, it was known that either of those deals would take a lot of money and that it would leave the franchise with not much money to spend afterwise, but that was not the case. After choosing to extend Williams, as referenced earlier, Kenny Golladay, Adoree Jackson and Kyle Rudolph were all also signed by the Giants. This obviously improves the team as a whole, but the big thing here is that all of these free agents have something in common, their belief and trust in Joe Judge is a big reason they signed with the Giants.
Kyle Rudolph, for example, indicated that there were over ten teams trying to sign him, but after a talk with Judge he knew that the Giants were the team for him. Plus, the biggest signing Kenny Golladay, had a meeting with Judge prior to signing, and after the meeting he signed the deal. So it is clear that Joe Judge had a big role in the Giants having a ginormous off-season.
No, the Giants did not sign the biggest free agents, but the fact that players actually want to come play for the Giants, and the fact that the head coach is a big part of that is definitely something the Giants organization could build on.
Photo Credit: Vincent Carchietta
