Joe Judge critical, consistent and reflective after first win as NFL head coach

Joe Judge was far from warm and fuzzy after his first win as an NFL head coach.

Refreshingly, after Sunday’s ugly 20-19 victory over Washington, Judge was the same guy.

His first comment about rookie linebacker Tae Crowder’s game-changing, 43-yard fumble return for a touchdown was a detailed critique of Crowder kicking the ball before he finally picked it up.

“I wish Tae would have bent his knees a little better and taken it cleaner off, but I’m glad the second time on through he got it and finished on out,” Judge said. “Got to make sure we don’t kick that thing initially and give them an opportunity to get on that ball.”

Peeling the curtain back slightly, Judge showed a bit of his human side, too.

He admitted that in the locker room afterward he thought about his late father, Joseph, who passed away at 66 in 2017.

“On the sideline, no,” Judge said. “Within a couple of text messages I received when I went to my locker, yes. So the short answer to your question is yes, I did. That’s obviously a big part of a lot of the things that I do.”

Daniel Jones gave Judge the game ball in the postgame locker room, and the players doused him in celebration, too.

“I gave him the game ball but he was quickly dumped with Gatorade, and a lot of people played a part in that celebration,” Jones said with a smile. “So it was good. It was a fun moment after the game.”

The Giants (1-5), by beating Washington (1-5), are somehow still relevant in the NFC East. The Philadelphia Eagles (1-4-1) lost again Sunday, and if the Dallas Cowboys (2-3) lose to the Arizona Cardinals on Monday night, the Giants will travel to Philly on Thursday just one game back of first place.

Really, though, Judge said his emotion on the sideline as the clock hit zeroes was “just joy for the players.”

“To see them smiling, to see them rewarded for their hard work, proud of the guys that they get some tangible results,” he said. “That’s really what you play for. You do a hard job of — you really want to teach them and then have success with it. That’s really the reward in our profession.”

That is the heart of who Judge is: a teacher with a whistle and a headset. But because he is a teacher, that also meant grading his team harshly for what Judge called a “grimy” game they easily could have lost.

The Giants did so much on their own to lose Sunday’s game. They simply played a Washington team with a below-average quarterback in Kyle Allen.

Crowder, the Mr. Irrelevant final pick of April’s NFL Draft, broke a 13-13 tie with 3:29 remaining by scooping up Allen’s fumble after a Kyler Fackrell sack. Allen was in Fackrell’s grasp and tried to shovel the ball forward and fumbled.

But the Giants defense promptly surrendered a 75-yard touchdown drive that would have tied the game with 36 seconds to play had Washington coach Ron Rivera kicked the extra point.

Fortunately for the Giants, Rivera went for two points and the win, and Blake Martinez and Dexter Lawrence both hit Allen and forced an incompletion with the Giants' coverage on the back end doing its job. Judge said that was a coverage the coaches had just installed this week.

Logan Ryan, who’d been beaten by Cam Sims on Allen’s 22-yard game-tying TD pass, recovered the onsides kick to seal it.

It was hard to believe the Giants were in that position, though, given how the game had progressed.

Daniel Jones threw his first touchdown pass since Week 1: a 23-yarder to Darius Slayton in the first quarter. And Jones rushed seven times for 74 yards, including a 49-yard run in the first half that marked the Giants' longest offensive play all season.

But Jones finished with a career-low 112 yards passing and threw a horrendous third quarter interception in the end zone to Washington corner Kendall Fuller that negated a nine-minute, 14-second drive.

“I just was trying to throw the ball away and didn’t get enough on it out of the back of the end zone,” Jones said. “Got to make that decision sooner and get the ball out. Can’t afford to make those mistakes.”

Crowder’s defensive touchdown was the second in two weeks for the Giants, after Fackrell’s interception return at Dallas. But Jones' offense is still unimposing and hard to watch.

The Giants drove only 27 yards for Sunday’s touchdown after a James Bradberry interception of Allen gave them a short field. And that means Jason Garrett’s offense has just one touchdown drive longer than 27 yards in the last four games (a 75-yard drive in the Cowboys first quarter).

Judge also has to answer to questionable game management himself.

In the second quarter, with the Giants up 13-3, defensive tackle Austin Johnson roughed Washington punter Tress Way on 4th and 9. But Rivera aggressively went for it on 4th and 4 from the Giants' 40-yard line, and the call paid off with an Allen 5-yard TD pass to Logan Thomas with 17 seconds left in the second quarter for a 13-10 halftime deficit.

That marked the fifth time in six games that the Giants defense allowed a touchdown drive of 70 yards or longer in the final two minutes of a first half.

Compared to Rivera, Judge coached ultra-conservatively in the third quarter. The Giants had the ball 4th and 2 at the Washington 38-yard line and opted to take a delay of game penalty to give themselves more room to punt. It was a major head-scratcher that the Giants prioritized field position at that moment over converting that down for a chance at more points.

Judge got his first win out of the way, and he did it while continuing to teach, including his benching of rookie first-round left tackle Andrew Thomas for being late to a meeting.

“He made a mistake, and mistakes have consequences,” Judge said.

And the victory therefore “breathes life into the building, breathes life into the locker room,” as reinforcement of all the hard work, Slayton said.

“[When] you’re 0-5 or whatever, some people jump off the bandwagon,” Slayton said. “But our division leader only has two wins. So we’re right there with it.”

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