Joe Judge’s message to Giants players after crazy brawl
For those on the outside, and some who may harbor such thoughts on the inside, wide receiver Sterling Shepard has a message:
If you do not like it, there’s the door.
The methods of coach Joe Judge are once again up for debate after he put his entire team through conditioning running and demanded push-ups after a large brawl near the end of Tuesday’s practice. These sort of melees are commonplace. The punishment for this, though, was more in line with what goes down in high schools and colleges as opposed to the NFL.
“That’s kind of the standard we’ve set here in this building and as a team and I think guys have bought in and know what to expect whenever you step on the field and when you’re playing under a guy like coach Judge,’’ Shepard, the longest-tenured Giants player, said Wednesday. “If you don’t like it then you’re welcome to leave but that’s the way we do things around here and everybody is standing by that. And I’m all for it.’’
Judge, a day after his F-bomb-filled excoriating of his team, unapologetically called himself “a little bit old school in how I believe’’ and listed “fundamentals and foundation, it’s about discipline, it’s about culture’’ as the centerpieces of his coaching philosophy.
“So, in terms of the modern day, I know a lot of people have different ways of doing things,’’ Judge said. “I know there’s a proven way that works, and we’re going to stick to the base fundamentals that we believe in.’’
Judge says it matters more how the Giants respond and react to what happened to trigger the brawl in practice than the actual reasons why it went down the way it did.
“The result of having something like that in a game is gonna be 15-yard penalties, ejections from the game and, for players and coaches specifically, fines,’’ Judge said. “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.’’
Near the end of Tuesday’s practice — the first in full pads — safety Xavier McKinney hit running back Corey Clement harder than the drill warranted, sending Clement tumbling to the ground. As safety Jabrill Peppers reacted to the hit, tight end Evan Engram shoved Peppers to the grass. From behind, safety Logan Ryan shoved Engram in the back, escalating the situation, as bodies dove into the center of a scrum, with quarterback Daniel Jones down at the bottom of the pile.
“The message to the team was consistent for every player,’’ Judge said. “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 ended practice two periods short of completion and demanded his players run and do push-ups.
“In terms of fights, my policy has been to get guys and get them out of practice,’’ Judge said. “That happened, it involved the entire team, I threw the entire team out of practice.
“Generally, we just ended practice at that point, we were going to go ahead and get our conditioning in. We had things planned for conditioning anyway. When something happens, there needs to be feedback.’’
As for any carry over of hostilities, Judge said there were not any in the locker room, training room or team cafeteria.
“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 ultimately, we have to eliminate bad football. Penalties are bad football.’’