Alabama's Nick Saban Praises NY Giants HC Joe Judge, Rookie Xavier McKinney

The New York Giants surprised many when they hired Joe Judge as their head coach, but he has the Nick Saban stamp of approval. 

"When Joe was here, he was a young guy, very bright, enthusiastic, great teacher, really good relationships with the players, had lots of leadership qualities about him because of the example that he set and the energy and the enthusiasm he had on a daily basis," Saban said on the Giants Huddle podcast. "And he was really smart. He had a good understanding of football. So no surprise to me that Joe has gotten to this point in his career, and we certainly wish him well. He did a fantastic job here for us."

Judge, 38, was a special teams assistant under Saban from 2009-11 before he joined the New England Patriots. He then spent the next eight seasons under Bill Belichick, serving as a special teams coordinator and wide receivers coach. 

While Judge's own bona fides remain to be seen, it's hard to find two better mentors than Saban and Belichick. Judge won two national championships in three years with Saban before adding three Super Bowl rings in New England.

The Giants added to the lineage in the second round of April's draft, taking former Alabama defensive back Xavier McKinney. Saban said the similarities of the coaching tree should make McKinney's transition easier. 

"I think it'll be helpful to him because we do—when I was coach at the Dolphins or Bill Belichick's defensive coordinator in Cleveland—we do a lot of the same stuff here from a coverage standpoint, from a secondary standpoint," Saban said. "So our guys typically make good adjustments. I know a few years ago we had six guys sign NFL contracts and five of them ended up starting as rookies. Even though this will be a transition, I think most of the things that 'X' is going to be exposed to, he's probably done. They might call it something different. I think it'll be an easy transition for him."

Still, Judge has maintained he has no plans on attempting to become the latest Saban or Belichick clone in the coaching ranks.

"I'm going to be myself. I'm not going to try to be anybody else," Judge said on Tiki and Tierney. "If I try to be anybody else, it's going to be disingenuous and it's going to fail. If you lie to the team, you lose them right away.

"As far as imitating somebody else, that's never been my style. Probably one of the [reasons] I've gotten along with the coaches I've worked with in the past is my personality, while it meshed, was opposite in a lot of ways to the way they presented things to the team and we kind of complemented each other."

Neither Belichick nor Saban have the strongest coaching tree, despite several of their assistants finding head coaching positions. Belichick assistants, in particular, have almost unilaterally failed as NFL head coaches; Bill O'Brien is the only one of 10 who posted a career winning record with the top job.