“Building on swamp ground:” ST coach Thomas McGaughey says it’s “harder to build” in New York

Head coach Joe Judge’s penchant for giving long, rambling, odd answers and for talking about progress rather than results seems to have infected the New York Giants coaching staff.

Special teams coordinator Thomas McGaughey was asked Thursday for his “best case” for Judge and the Giants coaching staff coming back in 2022. The Giants, of course, have gone 10-22 in Judge’s two seasons and his return for a third season is likely, but not guaranteed.

Here was McGaughey’s answer:

“The best case is building on the things that we’ve done. I know sometimes it’s always easy to second guess and critique and say, ‘Oh, they don’t do this.’ You don’t see a lot of stuff that’s going on behind the scenes. There are some good things that are happening, and we’ve just got to keep building and stay to the process.

“A lot of times when you’re building on swamp ground, you’ve got to go 10 times deeper before you start going up. We’re all on swamp ground if you haven’t figured it out and it’s a little harder here. It’s not Cleveland. It’s not other places. It’s New York City and it’s harder to build here because you’ve got a lot of things that you’re working against. It’s hard. You come get your head beat in. You’re going to get your teeth kicked in. You’re going to get booed in the stadium. If you’re not strong mentally, you’re not going to be able to make it here. That’s the reason why they say, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. It is hard here and you’ve just got to stay the course, keep pounding, keep grinding and eventually you’ll get to where you want to be, right? Because you’ll have some success and it’ll happen here.

“When we’ve seen this city flip, we already know what it is. We’ve seen one week, ‘Eli (Manning) sucks.’ We’ve seen that, right? Now, his freaking name’s up in the rafters after two Super Bowls. We’ve seen it here. We know what it is. The guys that have been here, we understand it and we know exactly what it is. Again, you’ve just got to keep your head down, keep working, keep grinding and eventually get to where you want.”

Huh?

McGaughey certainly has the ‘progress behind the scenes’ stuff memorized from Judge’s playbook. And, sure, the Meadowlands is built on swamp ground. The football team isn’t, though. Also, what makes it harder in New York? What are you working against that isn’t the case in other places?

I’m not sure I follow McGaughey here. Am I the only one who doesn’t get what he was trying to accomplish?