Joe Judge made it clear from Day 1 that he wanted to bring a physical, old-school approach to New York.
Thursday provided another example of the ideology the Giants head coach is seeking to instill.
Frustrated by the team's effort during the first 25 minutes of practice, Judge huddled his players together and proceeded to unleash a profanity-laced tongue-lashing before promptly restarting practice from the top, according to ESPN. And yes, that includes the stretching portion, as well.
Outsiders might view the brash decision, which took place in full view of the media, as one reserved for the likes of players at the Pop Warner, high school or collegiate levels. But, if you ask team captain Saquon Barkley, he'd probably advise you to not rush to judgement.
"I love it," the running back said. "That is something we knew we were going to focus on. Everything we do is going to have purpose behind it. Coach didn't like how we started off. We kind of started over, and as captains and as leaders, we had to step up to the challenge. I think we responded. The thing is on Monday there won't be any restarts. We have to find that way to have that energy and have that purpose from the beginning. We shouldn't take a restart for that to happen."
Barkley reinforcing the message of doing things with a purpose sounds identical to comments made by his coach last month. Judge turned heads in August after defending his practice of making players and coaches run laps after making mistakes. The practice restart falls in line with his M.O. thus far.
A product of the Bill Belichick School of Coaching, Judge has not backed down from his hard-nosed style despite having chances to change his tune. Like Barkley, linebacker Blake Martinez, who signed this summer after four years in Green Bay, seemed to also agree with Judge's mentality.
"Yeah, it was one of those moments where we just didn't come out the right way and we need to kind of refocus and get things going again," Martinez said. "And we did that. We had to bounce back and kind of show our resolve and our ability to adapt and kind of, as a team, understand what we're doing wrong and fix it."
There's little to no chance the way things are run inside the walls of the Quest Diagnostics Training Center will change anytime soon. It'll be up to the Giants to make sure Judge doesn't have to bang his gavel in frustration again.
