The Giants were humiliated by the Bears yesterday, 29-3, and have one more game to play before putting the second losing, listless season of the Joe Judge era to bed. Judge, who apparently has the backing of the owners and will be back next season, has yet to make anything good happen for his team on the field. He does, however, look to be well on his way to creating a rich tradition of punctuating each season with an embarrassing meltdown.
Last year, it was Doug Pederson throwing in the towel and costing Judge's 6-10 Giants an undeserved shot at the playoffs that had Judge throwing a fit. This year it was ... well, I'm not really sure what could have caused Judge to rant semi-coherently for more than 10 minutes, other than the fact that he is a deeply unpleasant person with no self-awareness. I won't subject you to the whole thing, but here is a representative clip in which Judge claims that Giants players who are going to be free agents next year are in in his office every day "begging to come back," and that there are players who left after last season who call him "twice a week" to say they wished they were still with the Giants even though they are getting paid more somewhere else.
I usually find myself fascinated by an NFL coach's impassioned rant, if for no other reason than the fact that they tend to have the kind of intense, strange personalities that I am less likely to encounter in real life. Watching them occasionally pop off is like peeking into another culture that's governed by a totally different set of rules and values than my own. It's kind of fun!
But I just can't get there with Judge. He's not an interesting football weirdo. He comes off no different than the dumbest, most useless middle manager you've ever encountered, except that his ego is dialed up an extra 60 percent. This guy, my god, how can anyone stand listening to him every day for a whole football season?
