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Memo to Joe Judge . . .
The Giants have a new coach in New England Patriots assistant Joe Judge.
They clearly didn’t want to pay Matt Rhule the $9 million-a-year Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper did.
When it comes to head coach salaries, there is no salary cap. Tepper is worth a reported $11 billion. So is paying a coach, who you think is excellent at his job, $9 million-a-year, too much money?
And not only is Rhule making a lot more than Judge, but he’s in a much better media situation, and like I said the other day, this matters.
The Panthers have a very small media contingent than New York, and the press conferences are a lot more tame.
From a quality of life standpoint, that matters.
Ask Pat Shurmur. He won’t be sending most of the Giants beat writers Christmas cards moving forward.
Getting hammered with “gotcha” and “click-bait” driven questions every day can age you. It’s tedious to go though this on a daily basis during the season.
Look at what Adam Gase went through this year with some in the New York media.
Rhule won’t have to deal with any of that.
As for Judge, who is coming off jobs working for Nick Saban at Alabama and Bill Belichick in New England, if he takes the approach of these two dictators, with the New York media, he’s going to have issues.
Matt Patricia tried to pull that in Detroit, and it didn’t work out very well.
You can’t act like Saban and Belichick without all their rings and trophies.
Gase actually is pretty good with the New York press. Obviously, he doesn’t get a long with the Daily News writer, but he gets along great with the rest of the beat writers. Personally, I really don’t have a relationship with him, one way or the other.
He has a really smart strategy, and I have mentioned this before. He comes over to the beat writers during the individual drills (when position coaches take over their groups for a tutorial), and he chats with the group. This is separate from his daily press conference. It’s much more casual. Talks football, jokes around a little – it’s very chill.
And this approach has worked swimmingly well with the beat writers, aside from the Daily News writer, who does not partake.
While a lot of fans and sports talk hosts destroyed Gase last season, the beat writers, aside from one guy, has been pretty measured. These sessions, which have humanized the coach with the other beat writers, is a contributing factor.
Judge should consider doing this.
And he should get some major media training on how to handle the “new” New York market.
Like we mentioned the other day, New York has always been tough, but now it’s even tougher, as newspapers and their websites try to survive, with newspapers dying across the fruited plain.
So a number of writers come armed with plenty of “gotcha” and “click-bait” questions on almost a daily basis.
Rhule got the much better media market to deal with.
Good luck Judge dealing with the “new” New York media and a very tough Giants press room.
One bit of advice – don’t act like Belichick and Saban here – it won’t work.
January 8, 2019
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