Joe Judge Reveals His Message to Giants Following Tuesday's Team Ruckus

New York Giants head coach Joe Judge was the picture of calm a little more than 24 hours after his team erupted into al all out ruckus. But his message was still as strong as ever.

Author:
Patricia Traina
Publish date:
Aug 4, 2021 2:51 PM EDT

Giants head coach Joe Judge isn’t interested in who or what started Tuesday’s melee at practice that saw players piling up on each other following a series of extra pushing and shoving that took place on a play.

What he is interested in, however, is how the team responds moving forward from the incident that resulted in Judge ejecting the whole team out of practice despite having a couple of sessions left and issuing an angry verbal tirade on top of a series of goal line to goal line sprints and rapid-fire pushups.

“The important thing is we learn from it, that we can’t do anything that’s going to cost our team in a game,” Judge said Wednesday. “We coach in all aspects of the game to eliminate penalties. Listen, the result of having something like that in a game is going to be 15-yard penalties, ejections from the game, and for players and coaches specifically, fines.

“We have to understand for everything that you do there’s a consequence. We have to understand it’s our job to put ourselves in a position to win football games and we don’t want to do anything that goes ahead and puts us in a position where that takes away the opportunity to win games. And what happened [Tuesday] at practice would have taken away the opportunity to win a game, based on the actions on the field. There needs to be consequences, there needs to be lessons learned and we need to move forward as a team and not repeat the mistake.”

The altercation began when safety Xavier McKinney delivered a little extra pop in his hit of running back Corey Clement. Safety Jabrill Peppers’s reaction drew an angry shove from tight end Evan Engram, who in turn drew a shove from safety Logan Ryan. And before the coaches could blow the whistle, an all-out melee ensued.

When it was all said and done, quarterback Daniel Jones emerged from the bottom of the pile, unscathed (as were the others who partook in the rucks) but still a scary sight for a franchise that is counting on him this year.

Judge didn’t specifically single out Jones for getting involved in the pileup, but he did say, “We don’t want any player on the bottom of the pile, we don’t want any player jumping in like the way they did.”

Judge reiterated what both Ryan and Jones said after things had calmed down Tuesday following the penalties, that whatever happened on the field did not cause any kind of rift in the locker room.

“Our guys are in here, and I wouldn’t say we’re laughing off the situation, but they understand we’re all one team, and we can’t do that to each other,” Judge said. “The most important part of that lesson they have to learn is we have to eliminate bad football. Penalties are bad football.

“I explain to my players all the time, when you get a 15-yard penalty you’ve got to run that much further on the field to score. When you have a consequence of that, where you have to run right away, that enforces that ‘Hey, I can’t afford to make that mistake.’”