You might not have heard too much about the New York Giants’ new head coach, Joe Judge, who was hired on Tuesday, but one thing we can already tell you about him is that he’s a good storyteller.
ABC6 in Providence’s Ian Steele interviewed Judge at last year’s Super Bowl for a piece on the strangest task coaches were ever asked to do. Judge, who was the New England Patriots’ special teams coordinator at the time, shared a funny story about the time he helped build a swing set for Freddie Kitchens’ daughters during a bye week. The story took place in 2005 at Mississippi State when Kitchens was the Bulldogs’ running backs coach and Judge was a graduate assistant.
From last year's Super Bowl media day. @NCoitABC6 & I were working on a story asking coaches what the strangest task they've ever been asked to do was.
For Giants HC Joe Judge it was building a swing set for Freddie Kitchens' kids…on a bye week.
Brutal. Whatever it takes! pic.twitter.com/u89Z4VmT47
— Ian Steele (@ISteeleABC6) January 7, 2020
At least Kitchens hooked them up with some compensation for having them spend their bye week that way. And as if putting the swing set together wasn’t hard enough already, they later had to move it? Yeesh. At least you know Judge is willing to go to great lengths to be a team player.
The 38-year-old heads to the Giants after coaching with the Patriots from 2012-2019 and Alabama before that. Can he coach? We will find out. At least he seems likable so far, and it wouldn’t take much to have a better head coaching career than Kitchens.
