Report: Former Giants HC Joe Judge to Join Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss CFB Staff

Paul KasabianFeatured Columnist IIApril 4, 2024

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Former New York Giants head coach Joe Judge is joining the Ole Miss football staff.

Per ESPN’s Chris Low, Judge “is expected to serve in a senior analyst role” under head coach Lane Kiffin, who is entering his fifth season in Oxford.

Judge most recently served as the New England Patriots’ assistant head coach last season under Bill Belichick, who just parted ways with the organization after a 24-year run.

Judge played football at Mississippi State and remained at the school to work as a graduate assistant fro 2005-2007. He then spent one year as a linebackers coach and special teams coordinator for Birmingham-Southern before working under Nick Saban as a special team assistant at Alabama from 2009-2011.

Judge then jumped to the pros with the Patriots, working in New England for eight seasons. He served as a special teams assistant (2012-2014) and special teams coordinator (2015-2018) before adding wide receivers coach duties to his role in 2019. Judge won Super Bowls with the Pats in 2014, 2016 and 2018.

After the 2019 season, Judge was in the mix for the head coaching gig at his alma mater, but the Giants came calling instead.

The first season under Judge started disastrously (1-7) but ended with promise after a 5-3 finish. Miraculously, the Giants would have won the NFC East at 6-10 had the Philadelphia Eagles beaten Washington in the final regular-season game of the year. But Washington won, leaving the Giants to look toward the following campaign.

That year brought some promise after the Giants finished with a top-10 scoring defense the year before, coupled with the return of running back Saquon Barkley off a torn ACL among other potential positives. However, the wheels fell off in year two, with the team finishing second-last in scoring for the second-straight year en route to a 4-13 season.

Judge was fired after the season, but he landed back with the Pats as an offensive assistant and quarterbacks coach. After finishing sixth in scoring in 2021, New England fell to 17th in 2022, with quarterback Mac Jones notably regresssing and even getting benched en route to an 8-9 season. Everything fell apart for the Pats last year, with the team bottoming out at 4-13.

Now Judge returns to his former rival after a 11-year stint in the pros. The three-time Super Bowl winner brings a wealth of experience and has served under two of the game’s greatest coaches in Saban and Belichick. He also joins an Ole Miss team that’s looking to build off an 11-win season that ended with a Peach Bowl victory and a No. 9 spot in the polls.