How Joe Judge is Channeling the Late Herb Brooks

Herb Brooks built a hockey dynamo by turning a group of college students into a gold medal-winning team that famously beat the USSR in the 1980 Olympics. While some of his methods were headscratchers, they worked, and whether it's by accident or on purpose Giants head coach Joe Judge is channeling some of those approaches.

Ever since the Giants commenced their virtual off-season program, Judge has spoked repeatedly about mastering the fundamentals, believing that doing so allows a player to play up-tempo.

So at this point in training camp, the fundamentals and mental mistakes that can sink a team just aren’t going to be tolerated. And if someone does screw up, Judge has them run penalty laps.

“Well, there are consequences on the field for making mistakes,” Judge said. “In a game (a mistake) costs you five, 10, 15 yards. So in practice, there has to be consequences, so we learn how to deal with our mistakes. “

The penalty laps don’t just apply to the players. The coaches have to run them too if their position groups don’t deliver the goods.

It might sound barbaric and an easy way to turn the players off, but it's also a good teaching tool that emphasizes that if you make a mistake, you won't simply receive a pat on the backside and a "Go get 'em next time" urging.

The Giants training camp scene is almost reminiscent of a tactic used by the late Herb Brooks, the head coach of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, which is brilliantly captured in the movie "Miracle."

In one memorable scene, the players are losing a game. Instead of paying attention to what's happening on the ice, the players on the bench are more interested in checking out the ladies in the crowd.

Brooks, brilliantly played by Kurt Russell, becomes irate as he witnesses this. So after the game ends, he orders his players back on the ice and has them do the equivalent of endless wind sprints where they skate back and forth between blue lines on the rink. Meanwhile, Brooks, in between yelling some harsh realities at his players, reminds them in no uncertain terms that they're not good enough to afford to play sloppy hockey, ending each mini-rant with the order "Again!” 

 That's not the only way that Judge's practice methods channel Brooks' approach.

Brooks, while trying to get his team to play as one, would occasionally pick a player at random and ask him his name, where he was front, and for whom he played.

The players naturally gave their name, their hometown, and the college program they played for, which irked the head coach.

So at the end of the wind sprints on ice scene in the above clips, the actor playing team captain Mike Eurizone finally figures it out. After blurting out his name and hometown without prompting, he looks Brooks in the eye and says, “I play for the United States of America” to put an end to the team's punishments.

What does this have to do with the Giants and Judge, you might ask? Because as I noted last week, the team has been working without names on the back of the practice jerseys.

Why?

“To me, it's important to know who the players are on the field, across from you, by their body type and how they move more so than having seeing nameplates to identify your teammate,” Judge explained.

“When a quarterback is under center, I expect them to know, “is that safety in the box or is that a WILL linebacker?’ You know, right now we have numbers to meet the rules laid out by the league, but to be honest with you, the identification and who the players are, we should be better than that as coaches and players in knowing our teammates.”

Hey, the strategies might sound harsh or quirky, but if they worked once before in helping a team of young kids that no one thought had a chance of beating better and more established competition, who's to say it can't happen again with a football team that has won just 12 games in the last three seasons?

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