Joe Judge Hopes to Follow Bill Belichick's Success as an NFL Head Coach

New Giants head coach Joe Judge would love to emulate Bill Belichick's success as a head coach, but in attempting to do so, he's going to do things his way.

Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

When Giants' new head coach Joe Judge was contemplating his employment options, he consulted with his then boss and mentor, Bill Belichick, who knew a thing or two about the Giants organization. 

In an interview with Mike Tirico on NBCSN's Lunch Talk Live Wednesday, Judge, who worked as Belichick's special teams assistant from 2012-14 before being promoted to special teams coordinator in 2015 and then adding receivers to his duties, said that the normally stoic Belichick didn't hold back in expressing his fondness for the Giants organization. 

.@Giants Head Coach Joe Judge is taking things from working with other coaches in the league, like Bill Belichick, and will use those tools and apply them to his own coaching. #LunchTalkNBCSN pic.twitter.com/MbDOOevbXb

— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) May 6, 2020

"You could tell there was a different feeling for [Belichick] talking about the Giants than other conversations about other teams along the way." Judge said.

A member of Bill Parcells' coaching staff from 1979 to 1990, Belichick's time with the organization proved to be a critical and sentimental landmark in his career once he landed with the Patriots.

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Belichick, who rarely shares his feelings in public, shared some of that fondness for his time with the Giants in a 2009 episode of A Football Life.

Belichick told the story of how he took one last stroll through the catacombs of old Giants Stadium before a game against the Jets. It would be the last time Belichick stood in the stadium before it was demolished.

"We won a lot of games here. This is just a great organization," Belichick said during the episode. "I loved it here."

The hope is that Judge, who will get to patrol the Giants sidelines at MetLife Stadium, the team's new home since 2010, will be just as successful.

"I've had the opportunity to work for a lot of great coaches, and I've tried to take things from them along the way that I can apply in any situation going forward," Judge said.

"Every organization's different, every player's different, [and] the collection of players you have to make a team every year is different. You've got to have enough experience and a little bit of a template of how to approach situations differently to have success," he continued. "I saw a large part of that with Coach Belichick."

While Judge will be bringing experience that he considers valuable working under Belichick to his new position with the Giants, that doesn't mean Judge will be bringing Belichick's personality back to the organization.

"Personality is definitely a big part of it, and to me, it's just you got to be yourself, you have to be genuine," Judge said.

"You cannot lie to players. They see right through anything that's fake, anything that's false. You just got to be yourself, and that's on a daily basis, so they know what they're expecting with the consistency of the person."

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