Ron Rivera Responds to Joe Judge’s WFT Comments: ‘Talk About Your Own Team’

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Washington Football Team head coach Ron
Rivera expressed frustration about comments made by New York Giants
counterpart Joe Judge that were viewed as a jab toward Washington.

Judge made the remark Sunday
after the Giants lost their fourth consecutive game, a 29-3 blowout defeat to the Chicago Bears, to drop their
record to 4-12.

“This ain’t a team that’s having
fistfights on the sidelines,” he told reporters. “This ain’t some
clown show organization or something else, OK?”

Some viewed that as a shot toward
Washington after Jonathan Allen and Daron Payne were shown in an
altercation on the sideline during the team’s Week 16 loss to the
Dallas Cowboys. Judge has denied that was his intent with the
comments.

Rivera was asked about the
situation Friday during an appearance on The Kevin Sheehan Show (via
MSN’s Ed Valentine) and said he believes Judge should focus on his
own team because he doesn’t understand the context elsewhere:

“To be upfront about it, it
disappoints me because for somebody to make a comment like that and
not really know the circumstances of the situation we’ve gone
through. I mean for goodness sake you know if you pay attention to
what’s happening you would have found out that we had just had one of
our most popular players [Deshazor Everett], a guy that’s very
popular amongst his teammates, was in a terrible car accident where
his longtime girlfriend is killed. We had another player [Montez
Sweat] who lost his brother to murder and then we had another player
who lost another brother.

“There’s reasons why things happen,
and to take a shot at people when people are going through what
they’re going through, that’s not right. If you don’t know and
understand other people’s teams, talk about yourself, talk about your
own team. That’s what’s fair.”

Washington (6-10) and New York (4-12)
both entered 2021 with high expectations in what’s typically a
wide-open NFC East race. Instead, Dallas (11-5) ran away with the
division title and the Philadelphia Eagles (9-7) also made the
playoffs out of the NFC East.

So the exchange between the coaches
adds a little drama to Sunday’s regular-season finale between the Football Team and
the Giants, which have both been eliminated from playoff contention.