Giants' John Mara: No 7-Year Deal for HC amid Matt Rhule's Panthers Contract

New York Giants co-owner John Mara shed light on why the franchise made Joe Judge their new head coach over Matt Rhule, who signed a seven-year, $62 million contract to become the Carolina Panthers' head coach.

"(Rhule's) agent called me early Tuesday morning to say that he had a deal in place," Mara explained Thursday, per NJ.com's Darryl Slater. "It was a seven-year deal. I had a brief conversation with [co-owner] Steve (Tisch) and [general manager] Dave (Gettleman), and we agreed that we were not going there, for a number of reasons.

"One, we weren't going to a seven-year deal with anybody. But more importantly, we had somebody we were excited about."

Judge was announced Wednesday as the 19th head coach in Giants' history and fourth in the last five years.

Judge came to New York from the New England Patriots, where he served under Bill Belichick as an assistant special teams coach (2012-14), special teams coordinator (2015-18) and special teams coordinator/wide receivers coach (2019). He also coached under Nick Saban at Alabama from 2009-11. Overall, the 38-year-old has been a part of five championship teams.

"Joe is one of the brightest young coaches in our profession, and I think he will do a tremendous job as the head coach of the New York Giants," Saban said in a statement (h/t USA Today). "They are getting an extremely smart football coach who is very loyal, organized and diligent about getting the job done."

Details about Judge's contract were not disclosed by Mara, but it can surmounted that it's not seven years or $62 million. 

"For a new head coach in the National Football League, I just didn't think that was a reasonable way to go," Mara said Thursday. "That's all. Would we have talked about moving some parts around in that deal? Possibly, if we weren't excited about the candidate that we already had."

Mara said that Rhule was still scheduled to come meet with the Giants on Tuesday afternoon despite feeling "very excited" about their interview with Judge on Monday. Rhule was a highly touted candidate across the NFL for turning Baylor around from a 1-11 campaign in 2017 to 11-3 last season.

The Giants fired Pat Shurmur, who went 9-23 across two seasons, after the team finished 2019 at 4-12. Judge will now be tasked with getting New York to the playoffs for the first time since 2016.