Fans may not think highly of Pat Shurmur, but coaches and players do
Credit: AP/Charles Rex Arbogast
The name "Pat Shurmur" still rankles many in this area. There’s little reason it shouldn’t.
During his two-year tenure as Giants coach, his teams won nine of 32 games, were outscored by 153 points (863-710) and at no point rose above .500. His .281 winning percentage is the second worst in club history behind Bill Ansparger (.200 from 1974-76). He also was at the helm for the departure of popular wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and the dethroning of Eli Manning as starting quarterback.
So there won’t be a tribute video or any welcome back banners hung at MetLife Stadium on Sunday when he returns as the Broncos’ offensive coordinator.
But there are pockets where Shurmur still is respected and liked in the area. One of them sits in the office chair he once occupied at the Giants’ facility.
"I can’t speak highly enough of him as a person," Joe Judge, who replaced Shurmur as coach of the Giants in January 2020, said this past week. "I think he’s a fantastic person. He’s a great man. This guy came to work every day and did his best to put these guys in a position to be successful, and our guys recognize that. This guy worked hard every day for them."
Judge got to know Shurmur over the years as both were assistants and coordinators for different teams.
"We actually had some familiar family friends from his time in Philadelphia [coaching with the Eagles] and my time growing up there, some people that we knew in common," Judge said. "I got to meet him at the Combine a few years back . . . We’ve shared a beer together. We’ve gone to Mass together. We’ve gotten ashes on Ash Wednesday together. This is a guy that I’ve always taken time to sit down and talk with."
Judge isn’t the only Giants member of the Shurmur Admiration Club. While the team has turned over quite a bit since his departure — only 18 of the 53 players on the active roster were with the Giants during Shurmur’s stint — he was the first NFL head coach for a number of them, including Daniel Jones.
If Shurmur winds up having one redeeming on-field legacy with the Giants, it will be Jones.
"He was a rookie, he came in, he was very talented, he saw the game," Shurmur said of Jones in Denver. "I saw him grow. There’s growing pains when you put a rookie in there, and I think we all experienced that. But you could tell. He had games where he threw multiple touchdowns, he led us to some victories. Then he also had things happen that you say, ‘Well, we’ve got to clean that up.’ "
Jones said Shurmur did a good job simplifying things for him as a rookie, but the most important thing he did for Jones was put him on the field in Week 3 in 2019 in place of Manning.
"That was big for me," Jones said. "The best way to learn is playing the game, and I got that experience early. Going through the ups and downs of playing quarterback, of learning how to play this position in the NFL and learning on the fly, that was a big advantage to me to get out there and get those reps."
Giants tight end Kyle Rudolph played his entire career until this season for the Vikings, where Shurmur was his position coach and coordinator.
"He definitely will be one of those guys that hopefully after the game, after a win, I can go see him and say hi and ask him how he’s doing and how his family’s doing," Rudolph said. "He’s certainly one of the guys that I have a great affinity for in this game and I have a ton of respect for. He’s as good of a human being as they come and he’s equally as good of a coach."
To that last point, Shurmur’s coaching abilities, the Giants likely have more admiration for him than Giants fans do. Judge called him "one of the great offensive minds in all of football."
"The one thing Pat’s going to do is look at your history and he’s going to expose some things you’ve put on tape, so we’ll be very mindful about not only our own past experience against Pat, but also different times that he’s seen this scheme or schemes that are similar to this," Judge said. "He does a great job at getting players in matchups, he does a great job of creating explosive plays for players . . . It’ll be a great challenge for us this week."
There are, of course, some coaches on the current Giants staff who worked here with Shurmur. They know, to a certain extent, what he’s thinking and what he’s planning against the Giants.
When it was suggested to defensive coordinator Patrick Graham that he see if wide receivers coach Tyke Tolbert has any old Shurmur game plans from their time together with the Giants, Graham smiled.
"Wouldn’t be bad to look at that," he said.
Shurmur, who often eschewed emotional ties to any of the organizations or players or coaches he worked for previously as "feelings questions" during his time here, did seem to embrace the significance of his return to MetLife Stadium.
"I’ve got a lot of pride in all the players that I’ve worked with. Certainly you point to the quarterbacks that you’ve worked with in the past," he said. "I root for those guys. I worked really hard with those guys in that building for two years, and I sort of root for them. Not so much this week probably, but I want them to have success."
They never found much of it with Shurmur. On Sunday, they’ll try to find it at his expense.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
More Giants
