Joe Judge Refuses to Endorse Daniel Jones as the Giants Starter

The Giants' new head coach insists that everyone will have a clean slate when they report for the off-season program on April 6. But is his coyness part of a bigger plan?

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

INDIANAPOLIS, IN-- If you’re a Giants player returning from last year, new Giants head coach Joe Judge doesn’t care if you were an all-Pro, a starter, benched, injured, drafted high or not even drafted at all.

Judge was mainly mum when it came to questions about quarterback Daniel Jones and whether he would be the starting quarterback moving forward.

Judge has rarely even mentioned Jones’ name since being hired, which has unleashed some speculation that perhaps Judge isn’t quite as enamored with Jones as his starting quarterback as maybe the previous coaching staff was.

Judge, however, has insisted that's not the case, that it’s all about giving every single player on the roster a clean slate free of expectations to live up to before they even set foot on the field.

“I want you to understand this because it's important to me,” he said to a crowd gathered around his podium Tuesday morning at the NFL Combine.

“Every one of our players are going to come here with a blank slate and be able to compete from the ground up from day one. I'm not going to establish any kind of status or hierarchy within the individual players or position groups by spending a month talking about individuals. … The only thing that’s going to be relevant is how they perform from day one moving forward.”

WATCH: Joe Judge explains why he refuses to attach any expectations on players.

Judge’s refusal to commit to Daniel Jones has some wondering if the Giants are going to be this year’s version of the Arizona Cardinals, a team that drafted quarterback Josh Rosen high in the first round only to turn around and trade him away when Kliff Kingsbury was hired the following year.

But maybe that’s what Judge and general manager Dave Gettleman want people to think, especially since both men admitted that holding the fourth overall pick in the draft is, to use Judge’s words, "beachfront property."”

Gettleman seemed resigned that regardless of what he said, people were going to think and say what they wanted, and that included the lack of an endorsement for Jones.

“He finished the season as our starting quarterback,” Gettleman said.

So too did Eli Manning in 2018, and we all know how that story turned out.

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