Revealing The Giants Best Defense to Weather the Storm

Giants head coach Joe Judge is facing his first significant bout of in-season adversity thanks to the team's winless start. And that adversity makes building relationships more important than ever.

Let's be real. 

The Giants' playoff odds are on the outskirts at 0-3, but their season is far from over. 

Head coach Joe Judge has 13 games left to establish an identity his team can take into the future, and it starts on Sunday on the road to face the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium.

On paper, the football game doesn't come close to favoring the Giants, who are currently a 13-point underdog on the road. But from a bigger picture perspective, this Sunday's game is an opponent that represents a comparable hope of where Judge is trying to lead the Giants and one in which he can follow the lead of his coaching counterpart Sunday, Sean McVay.

When McVay took over as Rams head coach in 2017, he, like Judge, was a young head coach (youngest in NFL history at just 30 years of age at the time). Like Judge, McVay inherited a situation similar to what Judge has found himself with in East Rutherford.  

The Rams were coming off ten straight losing seasons and 12 out of the playoffs. They had a roster with a litany of questions at key positions, and a young quarterback, Jared Goff, that had yet to establish himself as a long-term starter.

For McVay, leading the Rams' high-speed turnaround over the last couple of years came down to the relationships he built with his players. 

"We connected over the phone," McVay said of his interaction with Judge. "I think it's all about building those relationships.

"Now going into my fourth season here, it's still about just building and developing relationships and those things take time and effort to communicate and understanding where guys are coming from."

To his credit, Judge has recognized the importance of building productive relationships with his players, which is a big reason why he believes the team remains bought-in to the program despite its forgettable start.

"We established the buy-in early in our culture and our process by the relationships we established with each individual," Judge said Friday. 

"When they understand collectively as a staff, the relationships we have with the team and the way they feed off each other, that helps you go through adversity.:

The importance of building relationships to weather the storms like what the Rams faced during McVay's earliest tenure and what Judge is facing now cannot be understated.

When former Giants head coach Tom Coughlin took over in 2004, he introduced a strict authoritarian management style that didn't exactly emphasize relationships.

When Coughlin changed just after the 2006 season and became more personable, that's when things started looking up for him, as he would go on to lead the Giants to their third Super Bowl championship in 2007 and then their fourth in 2011.

That's not to say the Giants are in any position to push for a Super Bowl title--far from it. Still, nothing is stopping Judge from building relationships with his players, which, as this team continues to weather the storms, should hold it together.