The New England Patriots’ season ended in Week 18, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t catching ricochet shots during the NFL playoffs.
The New York Giants captured their first postseason victory since 2011 on Sunday, defeating the Minnesota Vikings 31-24 in a competitive matchup that had an admittedly predictable finish. How does that have anything to do with the Patriots? Let Ryan Clark try to spell it out for you.
“I see why Brian Daboll doesn’t wear hats..,” the ESPN analyst tweeted Sunday night. “No way that beautiful mind could get into a fitted! Dude changed everything about this team in 1 year. My goodness. May be too early to JUDGE, but he’s no average JOE!”
Still don’t get it? That was a shot at Patriots assistant coach Joe Judge.
Judge, who spent this past season as New England’s quarterbacks coach, was New York’s head coach in 2020 and 2021 — preceding Daboll.
Judge’s tenure with the Giants was far from successful, as the career special teams coach led them to a 10-23 record over two seasons with zero playoff appearances. Daboll’s first season has been the exact opposite, with the fellow ex-Patriots assistant compiling a 9-7-1 regular season to get New York back into the postseason.
Judge hasn’t been much better in his return to the Patriots, struggling to make anything positive of his first season as a QBs coach. In coaching New England’s quarterbacks, Judge was given a fair amount of blame for Mac Jones’ extreme regression from his rookie season.
The expectation is Judge will remain with the Patriots, but in a different capacity than the one that was partly responsible for a lost season.
