One Giant Brawl
The Giants had a classic training camp brawl this week! There is always one. I feel so blessed, now my team gets the over-reactionary media scrutiny! Take that, losers! NFCEast baby!
There isn’t much reason to take a training camp fight this seriously. Immature dudes with a lot of pent-up aggression gotta explode somewhere and while fighting each other may not be the most positive example of masculinity to some degree in sports circles it does seem to help. Do a fight, yell it out, move on. Sure it would be more mature for them to handle themselves like adults and manage their feelings but I’m not sure we should raise our standards that high for football players.
Of course, this has only fed the negative Joe Judgement machine. I will be honest, I do not have the highest faith in Judge. I have no reason to have high faith yet. But I do think a lot of the negative coverage he’s gotten for his coaching habits has been overblown and based on people just affirming their pre-conceieved biases about him as a hire. Judge has a lot of factors working against him right now.
-He was a nobody. Nobody knew who Judge was before the Giants hired him. Coaches usually get some level of hype before they get hired. The fact that nobody knew a damn thing about him makes it seem like he’s not deserving of the job.
-He’s a Belichick disciple. Belichick disciples do not have good reputations. The mere fact that he’s from the Belichick tree immediately put him on everyone’s shit list, deserving or not.
-The team didn’t do well last year. They won just 6 games in a weak division and generally sucked.
-He’s a coach in New York and is, therefore, the victim of absurd media nonsense by default
It feels like the fact that he’s a Belichick disciple and a nobody immediately stuck him on everyone’s failure list and most opinions of him have been people just looking at the stories from camp so far and using them to confirm their pre-conceived notions on the guy. I think a lot of the negative press is overblown. So he makes the players run laps. Is that really such a ridiculous thing? Running is good conditioning. He curses a lot. Yeah? So do I. So do players. So does pretty much every sports coach I’ve ever met. He’s a hardass? Bruce Arians is a hardass and just won a Super Bowl. Belichick is a hardass and won 6. Being a hardass isn’t inherently a bad thing if it gets results. We’ll have to wait a bit to see if it backfires.
But because everyone already judged him a failed Belichick disciple it doesn’t matter, he’s garbage. Kelvin Benjamin said he’s bad so he must be bad. A few players retired after signing so he must be bad. Daniel Jones sucks balls so he must be bad. Players got in a fight so he must be bad. It’s all just overblown. Judge didn’t do anything to sway me either way last year but the team fought much harder every game (outside the 49ers game) than they ever did under Shumur. I feel like I can’t make much judgement on Judge yet because last year was such an anomaly with the COVID issue that this is actually his first true year coaching.
That said, Giants fans (at least that I’ve seen in my usual circles) have been pretty defensive of him and I think that defensiveness could be toned down a notch. It isn’t like all the negative impressions aren’t without some basis and there aren’t red flags. His hardass qualities don’t mean anything if the team doesn’t win. Laps don’t help if the team doesn’t win. Sure, his players are defending him but what do you expect from guys trying to or guaranteed to already make the team? To badmouth their HC? There are plenty of reasons to not trust Judge. I just think he’s more of a wait and see situation than already great or garbage. Hell, this year might not even be the best indicator overall. The defense looks to be good again but the offense will probably suck again. I’d put the Giants as the darkhorse NFCE favorite behind the TEAM and Cowboys. If this team doesn’t win games I’ll have a hard time putting most of that blame on Judge over Gettleman’s failures to address vital positions, our lack of talent, and Jason Garrett.
EDIT: No comic till Wednesday, life stuff
Giants media coverage
The Last Jedi was easily the best of the new trilogy and the final product would have better if JJ leaned into the skid instead of caving to whiny fanboys.
*Is hit by batteries*
JJ didn’t produce The Last Jedi. He only produced Episode 7, which is when I kicked Star Wars to the curb and to be honest I haven’t regretted that decision
he wrote, directed, and produced ep 9, that’s what the op is referring to
Wait they gave ep 8 to someone else and made JJ do 7 and 9? What the heck Disney
originally it was to be JJ for 7, Rian for 8, and Colin Trevorrow for 9, but then Trevorrow made awful movies like The Book of Henry so Disney panicked and fired him without a plan
And there’s more batteries where those came from
The Last Jedi is both the best Star Wars movie and the worst Star Wars movie.
i second this take. corporate storytelling holds little appeal for me, so it was thrilling to watch someone come in and just fuckin’ wreck the joint, narrative-wise. i was like “hooboy, disney’s gonna have to walk THIS one back! should be a highly stupid clusterfuck.”
The Last Jedi at least tried to do something different, but the whole trilogy was pretty bad. The problem is, unlike George, they didn’t know what the story was ahead of time. They just tried to wing it and hope that it all came together in the end.
Solo was seriously underrated and, along with Rogue One, was the best star wars movie to be released the last decade.
Rogue 1 is gorgeous and has zero good characters outside the robot and I laughed when all of them died
Solo looks like ass but at least the characters are fun
TLJ is the only new one I would rate positively, and that’s with caveats
Now something finally makes sense to me. I loved Rebels, grew to appreciate Clone Wars, and mostly enjoyed Solo and Rogue 1. The start and end of those narratives were imposed by the episodes they were chronologically stuck between, and anything that happened had to be consistent those endpoints. It didn’t prevent compelling story lines and characters from being developed (e.g Darth Maul as more than just another action figure), but Filoni and the other writers & directors couldn’t “reimagine” or gratuitously retcon things the way Rian & JJ did.
(btw Rian’s “reimagining” the Jedi as failures in TLJ was something Red Letter Media did long before TFA)
People get worked up about TLJ because one only defends the RoS if they pull the short straw.
I can’t argue their W/L record, and I’m not gonna say he’s penned in for Coach of the Year, but as you acknowledge, Judge had them mostly competing every week last year, regardless of circumstances. I don’t remember the numbers, but they lost 6 or 7 games by a combined total of like 10 points. As bad as our division was, we still were one Dougie P. Philly Special away from getting a playoff berth.
I think that’s enough of a reason to have hope. If he can get them giving the same effort, but with better talent and more experience? There’s reason to believe they won’t be a dumpster fire again! YAYYYY!!!
As for Star Wars… it all sucks now. ALL OF IT. It’s been hot trash since 1996, when Lucas took his first “special edition” dump on the series, making nonsensical changes while cramming 300 metric kilos of visual noise into every frame of film. That means Star Wars was excellent for just about 20 years (caveats for the Ewok Movies and Christmas Specials), and then nothing but a hot steaming pile of fecal matter for the 24 years since. Me, personally, I give Star Wars a grade of 3-14? 3-15? I can’t even keep track of how many bad movies Star Wars has pumped out at this point.
Why are you saying star wars sucks now when you’re the guy who got mad at me for spoiling the Mandalorian 3 months later
*siiiiiigh* Good times! To be clear, I came at you for throwing around spoilers out of the blue, with no warning for people who care, using a joke that didn’t even need the spoiler to be funny.
That it was Star Wars you were spoiling was entirely irrelevant. I’d have reacted similarly if you were spoiling The Witcher, The Boys, or any other Entertainment du Jour.
I thought his reaction to the brawl was more to do with Danny Jones getting caught in the riptide than the brawl itself. Even coaches who don’t like training camp brawls know they happen and understand why. You don’t make guys do death sprints unless they fuck up major.
That was my thought as well. Everyone knows that rule #1 of training camp is do *NOT* touch the QB under any circumstances. Fastest way to get kicked off of a roster if you’re a defensive guy.
The Last Jedi’s functions wonderfully as a fulfillment of the prophecy spelled out in last verse of Weird Al Yankovic’s “Yoda”. I also enjoyed the tributes to Hardware Wars and UHF. I don’t, however, find the movie to be particularly rewatchable or worth fighting over… and I unabashedly love Star Wars.
The Giants starting right guard Zach Fulton just retired, making it 3 players in the last few days. It seems like *something* is happening over there.
The Packers, Titans, and Raiders have also had multiple players retire, why are they not getting scrutinized like the Giants are? These guys are older and maybe wanted to see if they could hold up, and are realizing they can’t. It happens every year. I’m worried about our O-line depth but not about retirements
I have to wonder if it isn’t a vaccination thing too. If you’re an older player and don’t want to get vaccinated and the compensation isn’t worth the hassle of being unvaccinated nor getting the vaccine against what you’d like, retirement doesn’t seem that bad
This take makes a TON of sense, especially with the peer pressure they’d be facing. If I had a coworker who didn’t want to get vaccinated, and their stance put MY paycheck in jeopardy, I would be sending them “encouragement” to get vaxxed on an hourly basis.
Did you guys know that every Star Wars movie has the wrong title?
https://www.cbr.com/every-star-wars-movie-skywalker-saga-wrong-titles/
The sequels are pretty awful but no worse than any of the Marvel fare of late so like *shrug* that’s kinda what you have to expect.
i mean i would vehemently disagree but thats also my opinion vs your opinion
I’m at least a decade into being a crotchety old man apparently, because every superhero I’ve been dragged to in that timeframe seems mediocre to me. Not terrible, but not some mindblowing must-see spectacle that deserves to be praised as one of the pinnacles of achievement in film. The new Star Wars movies felt the same way. I watched them once, didn’t love them, didn’t hate them, but the chance of me ever rewatching them is close to zero. In Star Wars’ case I think people just desperately wanted them to be good after the letdown that was the Prequel Trilogy, so even though they’re mediocre movies people still wanted to like them and assign this almost religious sense of infallibility to them. Then of course you have the contrarians who not only say the movies are terrible but that the prequels are good now…which is laughable.
That’s not being an old man, that’s just keeping it real. Superhero movies are all the same brand of fine for what they are. Nothing groundbreaking, but a fun way to kill a couple of hours while hanging out with some buddies. I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch any of them, but I wouldn’t turn down an invite to go see one.
Training camp fights happen every year with every team. So long as they don’t continue into the locker room after practice is over everything is hunky dory. What makes this situation different is that it was full on bench clearing brawl involving most of the team. That is unique to the Giants this year. It might just be a supersized version of what normally goes on in training camp (I think so), but it might signal a lack of cohesion in the locker room. Guess which angle is more interesting to media types to run with.
I doubt this part is true, but supposedly Danny Dimes wound up on the bottom of the pile by tripping over his own feet while sprinting out to break up the fight. Amusing if it is the case.
That fight looks like a giant covid
I had the same thought.
Star Wars movies have always been mediocre at best, yes including the originals. Rise of Skywalker is definitely the worst one though
Honestly I find Solo to be more watchable than TLJ and The Rise of Palpatine. Johnson’s trash but it goes back to the person who hired him.
Agreed. I was a little disappointed with The Force Awakens, since it was, basically, a remake of A New Hope, but I thought the next two movies had a chance to really expand on the characters introduced in Episode 7. Unfortunately, there was little, to no, character development for either Finn or Poe and Rey was just way too vanilla. A roadmap for the entire trilogy likely would have fixed the issues with Episode 8 and 9. As it is, all three movies feel entirely disjointed.
rey is the matt ryan of star wars characters. there’s NOTHING THERE! she’s good because she’s good at being good but Palpatine came back… somehow
STAR WARS SUUUUUCKS. I grew up with the The Trilogy, so it has a special place for me, but it definitely has glaring flaws (coffewokscoff). the new ones are straight up trash. with the exception of rogue one, which was choppy but had some great filmmaking in it. getting to see a walker in urban combat was super dope. everyone dying was great, too.
Unlike Solo, the sequels never tried to do anything unique or cool. And when they did they always half assed it or shelved it. Honestly, Finn should have been one of if not the greatest Star Wars character. A stormtrooper who leaves the order to join the Residence and happens to be Force Sensitive and banging Oscar Isaac! No homo but sign me up lol
At least they didn’t make Luke female and give the part to Melissa McCarthy.
Every one of those “factors working against [Judge]” points to DOOM.
Also TLJ is the best new Star Wars. Visually it’s fantastic. Story wise the B plots pad things out unnecessarily. If you fast forward through the casino planet stuff and 2/3 of Poe’s scenes then it changes from a below average blockbuster into a great one.
“If you fast forward through the casino planet stuff”
That is exactly what I do when I re-watch it.
Well and I also suppress thoughts like “What idiot designed those bombers” and “Why didn’t the First Order fleet just jump ahead of the rebel fleet”.
I’ll probably have to wait 14 years to rewatch RoS like I waited 14 years to rewatch RotS
is it just me or is the draw play not updating?
Also fuck the rise of skywalker
Sorry bout the life stuff Dave. Hope it figures itself out