By all accounts, John Mara didn’t want to fire Joe Judge and didn’t plan to do so as late as Christmas.
But when the moment finally came on Tuesday, the result of a buildup of bad decisions and comments in the media by Judge, Mara told reporters it was “gut wrenching” to fire his head coach.
“We just got to a point where I thought we had dug ourselves a hole so deep that I didn’t see a path out of it unless we blew it up,” Mara said at a press conference Wednesday.
Judge was widely perceived as having done a solid job in 2020, and looked to be on decent footing even late into this season. But the Giants finished out the year by losing six straight games and failing to reach 10 points in four of them.
To make matters worse, Judge delivered an 11-minute filibuster after a loss to the Bears in which he took shots at other coaches and said players were begging to play for the Giants. The next week, he called for two quarterback sneaks with the Giants pinned deep in their own territory — a total capitulation the likes of which are rarely seen in the NFL.
It’s now been five seasons since the Giants made the playoffs, and 10 since they won a postseason game.
Mara wanted to have patience, he said, after firing Pat Shurmur and Ben McAdoo after short-lived tenures. But the final weeks made the decision obvious.
“I just didn’t see any end in sight,” Mara said.