Giants co-owner Steve Tisch waved a polite hello and did not break stride coming out of the SoFi Stadium visitors’ locker room Sunday with an entourage.
He left the stadium loudly, in a black Mercedes sprinter van at the back of a motorcade led by three California Highway Patrol police officers on thundering motorcycles.
No one needs to hear Tisch speak to know that a general manager change is a fait accompli.
The question at the moment, though, is whether ownership’s strong support of head coach Joe Judge has wavered at all.
Judge said Monday, just hours after seeing Tisch in L.A., that he feels ownership’s support and shared perspective in prioritizing a long-term rebuild toward sustainability.
“I’m not interested in shortcuts. I’m not interested in quick fixes,” Judge said. “I want to do this the right way, and when I took this job, I made it very, very clear that I was only going to do this if we were all committed to doing this the right way. And that’s been something that’s been very clear from ownership on down. I’m very happy with the support that ownership gives.”
John Mara has said consistently he believes in Judge’s vision, as well.
The 4-9 record, Daniel Jones’ injury and consecutive losses have stamped out all optimism for this season. But Judge said nothing is more important to him than delivering on his promise to rebuild the Giants “the right way.”
He feels the Giants have “poured the foundation” and that they are headed in the right direction.
“Both families are tremendous people to work for, and I know that this team is very, very important to them,” Judge said of Mara and Tisch. “It’s their family business. Football’s my family business, too. I take a lot of pride in what we do.”
Understandably, it is difficult for fans to hear Judge say that the Giants are making progress “internally” even though “sometimes that is tough to see externally.” Wins and losses are what matter most, after all, as Judge said himself.
But here’s what was most interesting about traveling with the Giants to Tucson, Ariz., last week:
We had the privilege of seeing the progress behind the scenes that is not showing up on game days.
We got to see the detailed preparation and successful execution first-hand in practices, only days before we then watched it all collapse when it counted in Inglewood, Calif.
Giants punter Riley Dixon, for example, threw an on-target dart to gunner Keion Crossen while running a fake punt in practice last week. Crossen button-hooked for the back-shoulder throw, made an all-hands catch and raced upfield on the University of Arizona’s practice field.
Then the Giants got to Sunday’s third quarter against the Chargers, Crossen was open across the first down marker to Dixon’s right, and Dixon airmailed his throw into the Giants’ bench.
Go to the second quarter.
Mike Glennon’s offense gained -2 yards on three plays with starting field position at the Chargers’ 41. On all three plays, Glennon was either off-target or throwing to a covered receiver when he had another open.
The most obvious was his gross third-down throw behind Devontae Booker. These were routine throws he’d made in practice that the Giants had confidence in him completing in a game.
They couldn’t even kick a field goal. They had to punt, and Dixon babied it 18 yards.
Stay in that second quarter.
The Giants simulated Justin Herbert’s roll right, throwback left downfield bombs for their safeties all week in practice. Jones, not taking practice snaps and looking for some way to help the team, ran one drill in which he repeatedly faked a hand-off, rolled right and threw the ball 55-to-60 yards in the air to his left.
Logan Ryan, Xavier McKinney and the safeties practiced tracking the deep ball and picking it off. The scout-team offense would have run these plays in a live period, too.
But Ryan and McKinney were helpless when Herbert cocked back and launched his 63-yard moonshot over their heads to Jalen Guyton for the touchdown.
This is why Ryan was putting the blame for Sunday’s blowout loss on the players and not the coaches, because they did it practice. They didn’t in the game.
“You saw it in practice. We prepared for it,” Ryan said. “We practiced that play, we were prepared for that play, and I just didn’t make the play.”
None of this makes Giants fans feel any better at the moment after such an embarrassing blowout loss.
On Monday, before flying back home to New Jersey, Judge faced questions about whether ownership has assured him he’ll be back for Year 3.
“Let me make this perfectly clear: my or anybody else’s hypothetical future, I’m never going to comment [on],” Judge said.
The truth is, if Jones isn’t playing, there is no reason for fans to have any optimistic expectations for these final four Sundays of the season.
Jones reportedly is expected to miss a third straight game Sunday vs. the Cowboys after a follow-up exam, per The Athletic, even if defensive tackle Leonard Williams (elbow) has a chance, as ESPN reported.
This is about the future and nothing else. Mara and Tisch need to decide what that future looks like. And they should probably start by remembering how low they had fallen prior to hiring Judge in January 2020.
It is believed Tisch wanted wholesale turnover coming off the 2019 season, but he and Mara compromised and retained Dave Gettleman while firing coach Pat Shurmur.
Judge’s hiring at least seemed to reflect Mara’s awareness of how broken his way had become, bringing in a new outside to turn the franchise around.
But retaining Gettleman after Judge’s first season, coming off their 6-10 mark in 2020, was a jarring and discouraging reminder that Mara only was willing to go so far to evolve.
No one is more aware of Judge’s 10-19 record through two seasons than the head coach himself.
“I am the head coach and everything in this program reflects on me,” he said after Sunday’s loss. “I will never shy away from that. I do not make any excuses and I do not hide from that, either. I am not a finger pointer. I am not an excuse maker, and I am never trying to deflect anything.”
What Judge can’t prove publicly, though, is that behind the scenes the Giants are a more functional operation than they were under the Gettleman-Shurmur regime.
The players respect and play hard for Judge, and the young coach does strike an impressive balance between being hard on his players on the field while never forgetting they are people and relationships, too.
The franchise’s constant losing — the thing Judge is trying to stop — at its root has been caused by mismanagement and poor dynamics inside the franchise’s own building, off the field.
Turning that around requires more than a few new players and 24 months.
There is no way to sugar coat it, either: this roster still mostly stinks.
They have nabbed some promising developmental young players since Judge arrived, like Xavier McKinney, Andrew Thomas, Azeez Ojulari and Quincy Roche.
But their offensive line and pass rush are horrendous, even though fixing them and drafting a quarterback were Gettleman’s three priorities when he took over in December 2017. And former No. 2 overall pick Saquon Barkley just isn’t much of a factor.
Given Judge’s personnel influence since his hiring, he does have to bear partial responsibility if decisions like signing Kenny Golladay and drafting Kadarius Toney don’t shake out.
Gettleman and Judge also could have drafted Herbert last year if they really wanted to.
If the Giants knew so clearly he would be a star quarterback, there should have been nothing stopping the GM from stacking that pick top on the Jones selection in 2019.
The key factor in judging Judge, though, is ownership’s understanding of what a rebuild really takes.
If Mara and Tisch had aligned Judge with a new GM already, they would have correctly framed this as the early stage of a long-term rebuild with a new vision. Fans would have understood.
But since the team went crazy in free agency and Mara sold playoff hope this summer, that’s what fans hoped for and expected, and that’s why there are calls for the team to blow it all up now.
Any coach will get fired if his team quits on him, so if that happens in these final four games, Judge wouldn’t be safe. No coach would be.
Barring that, however, Judge seems to think that Mara and Tisch still support and believe in his long-term vision. And that would be the correct course from the leaders of a franchise that has lost its way.