Giants’ coach Joe Judge tries to move past headset issue

New York Giants coach Joe Judge tried on Tuesday afternoon to move past the headset issue he raised after his team lost to the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night. The NFL said Tuesday it found no issues with the league’s equipment.

“We talked to the league, they’re looking into resolve the issues that we’ve had throughout the year. We’ll talk continuously with them,” Judge said. “That being said I made it very clear last night I’m not an excuse maker. I was asked a direct question about why I’m using timeouts in certain situations, and that’s the reason right there. That’s all I’m going to say about the headsets.”

Here are some other takeaways from Judge’s Tuesday media availability, held via Zoom.

A quiet trade deadline

Despite being 2-6 and with lots of speculation that tight end Evan Engram might be on the move, the Giants did not make any deadline deals.

“The decisions we made we thought were what was best for the team long term with where we’re at,” Judge said. “For us, we thought the decisions we made were best for the team going forward. We’re good with just moving on with business as usual.”

Players like Engram, Will Hernandez and the injured Jabrill Peppers can all be free agents at season’s end.

“Every decision we make is what’s best for the team long-term going forward. There’s a number of players we have that are free agents this year. There’s nothing ruling out us being able to bring those players back to continue being part of our team,” Judge said. “We want to build with the guys that are here, want to continue growing with the guys that are here that are established in our program as being team guys, guys that we believe have a skillset and the makeup to be be successful in thai program as we continue to build.”

On the restless fan base

The Giants are 2-6 this season and 8-16 in Judge’s tenure. The coach was asked about the comment he made at his introductory press conference when he stated he wanted to build a team the area and fan base would be proud of.

“I believe we’re building toward a program that’s going to be very successful for a duration of time,” Judge said. “There’s a lot of things that we’re building and doing very well right now that are things we can build on. There’s things we’ve gotta keep on correcting.”

“I also talked in the opening press conference about doing it the right way, and that takes time. We’ve gotta make sure that we continue working hard and take a step forward every day.”

On taunting penalties

The Giants were hit with two of them on Monday night.

“We’ve just gotta understand that you’ve gotta do business as business is being done,” Judge said. “Sometimes you get in a chippy game you’ve gotta be smart and not put yourself in a position where you give them an opportunity to throw a flag on you.”