GETTING TO KNOW JOE
Judge’s Philly roots: The LC Fade, the Dungeon, a bulldog and a family
To get an idea of where Joe Judge comes from, you have to know about his dad. The late Joseph Judge, who passed at age 66 on July 21, 2017, was “bigger than life.”
So says Tim Stairiker, 36, who has known Joe since 1995, when Joe’s father coached Stairiker’s “Romans” J.V. CYO football team with Joe on varsity.
“Big guy, big voice, big heart, and a great person,” Stairiker says of Joe’s father.
The Judges are a big extended family. They stretch from Northeast Philly’s Mayfair neighborhood to Jenkintown all the way north to Doylestown, where the new Giants’ coach was raised.
Say the name Judge in the city and the word that will come back to you is “tough.” And not just because Judge’s uncles, Jerry and Kerry, are in the Pennsylvania Boxing Hall of Fame.
Judge admits his dad, who played at Temple and in the Canadian Football League, “was very hard on me from a loving perspective” as a youth coach.
“He knew he couldn’t be hard on anybody else if he wasn’t hardest on me,” Judge said in a quiet moment after Thursday’s press conference. “So it was difficult and challenging to play for him, but I realized as I got older he had prepared for the challenges I was gonna have.”
Family and loyalty, however, still always trumped toughness for the Judges, who include older brother Jimmy and younger sister Jeannine. So Joseph was his middle child’s biggest fan, too.
Friend Greg Gaffney, 37, a Delaware state police officer who served two tours in Iraq (200809) for the Army, recalls a story Joe told while delivering his father’s eulogy in 2017.
“The way Joe’s father was, everything was over the top,” Gaffney says. “So when Joe signs with Mississippi State and they’re the Bulldogs, what does his father do? He goes and buys a bulldog puppy. He wants to breed the dogs. That’s what his father’s doing.
“So his dad has this bulldog,” Gaffney continues. “And one game they’re playing at Kentucky and Joe’s on the sideline, and somebody looks over and taps Joe and says, ‘Hey, is that (YOUR) dad in the end zone?’ His dad was standing there on the field. And later, he asked his dad how he got there. Joe’s dad had brought the bulldog puppy, walked up to the security guard and said, ‘This is Mississippi State’s mascot, I need to get him on the field.’ And they let him in!”
Judge’s mom, Denise, the principal at Mary, Mother of the Redeemer School in North Wales, Pa., sat proudly in Thursday’s audience watching her son on the big stage.
She politely declined an inter
view for this story. But there is a consensus among those close to Judge that his father was a great inspiration to him and is most certainly smiling down on his son now.
If you need proof, the date thatGiantsco-ownerJohnMara called to offer Judge the head coaching job was Jan. 7: Judge’s father’s birthday.
“That was special,” Judge said Thursday, needing only three words to say so much.
JOE GETS THE JOB
Gaffney worked Monday’s night shift on Delaware’s state SWAT team and was asleep for only a few hours when his phone started lighting up like a firecracker Tuesday morning.
“My God, three million text messages from every angle,” he says. “I roll over and all I’m reading is Joe Judge got the job. I was like: ‘Is this a dream?’ It was awesome.”
Mike deMarteleire, 40, Lansdale Catholic’s quarterback in 1996-97 prior to Judge’s twoyear high school stint under center, now works at Deacon Industrial Supplies.
“People come in to buy supplies, and we have a TV in there, and I got in trouble for watching the press conference,” deMarteleire says. “Then I watched it again before I went to bed on YouTube.”
“It’s surreal,” adds friend Steve Mocey, 37. “But in the same breath we knew his commitment was going to bring him great things.”
Mocey knows something else you don’t know about Judge, and not just that he threw Mocey his first-ever high school touchdown on “Pro Trips 979 Pop Pass.”
Let Mocey tell the story of how he met Judge at Lansdale Catholic where Mocey, Stairiker, Gaffney and Judge all played.
“The same way I met a lot of the older guys: somebody found out I gave fades and cut hair,” Mocey says with a laugh. “It went viral, and all the guys wanted me to cut their hair and give them a fade.
They used to call it the ‘LC Fade:’ no clip for the side, and the top was an eight clip. I’d put a little LA Looks in their hair for gel and they were ready to face the world!”
Judge became one of many regulars.
“I must have given Joe 100 haircuts,” Mocey cracks. “He was high maintenance — a once a week or every other week guy. Gotta have a clean neck!”
Judge’s hair, sure enough, was tightened up for Thursday’s press conference. Judge promised, though, that it wasn’t Mocey’s work.
“It’s close to the LC fade,” he said with a grin, surprised and amused by the question. “Every kid in the high school had the same haircut (because of Mocey). And when I would go home in college, my wife who was my girlfriend at the time would tell me, ‘You’re not letting Mocey cut your hair! You don’t need the LC Fade right now.’”
THE WORK ETHIC
Judge would drive around the corner every day as a senior and pick up Stairiker to start the halfhour ride to school.
“It was always a full car, we’d pick up other people,” Stairiker recalls. “(The music) would depend on the mood. Sometimes there was heavy metal playing, sometimes there were hair bands playing. It was a mixed batch. Joe has very eclectic taste in music.”
Stairiker’s most memorable trips with Judge, though, were to the Friday-after-Thanksgiving lifts.
“The toughest day of the season was always the day after Thanksgiving,” he says “We’d play North Penn, our crosstown rival, and in my time there we always lost. You woke up after Thanksgiving, the defeat was still there, you were sore . ... And Joe would call you up and say, ‘Let’s go run sprints’ or ‘Is the boys’ club open? Let’s go lift.’
“Joe has a superior work ethic,” Stairiker adds. “He’s able to upsell the hard work it takes to succeed because his enthusiasm and energy are just genuine. It’s what makes him a natural leader.”
Judge would always round guys up to work out in Lansdale Catholic’s weight room, which they called ‘The Dungeon.’ He’d mysteriously get the keys to open it when the school was closed. If people wanted to go with him, fine. If not, he’d lift by himself.
In Judge’s junior year of 1998, he passed for 1,953 yards, nine TDs and a 55% completion rate. And the Crusaders won a share of their third straight Pioneer Athletic Conference title.
Legendary coach Jim Algeo, who coached Lansdale for 44 years including a 2004 state title, had started a senior at quarterback in that season’s first game against Bethlehem Catholic. Judge, a junior, was waiting his turn after transferring from St. Joe’s Prep.
But Algeo’s son John, 41, Lansdale’s QB from 1993-95, recalls his father putting Judge in at halftime of that opening blowout loss. Judge led Lansdale to an 8-1 league record.
Gaffney recalls a game against Phoenixville when Judge got hurt, came back in a few plays later, and afterwards found out he’d played through a broken bone in his foot.
“He and his family are just tough as nails,” Gaffney says.
THE SAME JOE
Jim Algeo, 83, has been in the intensive care unit since Monday night, and his condition is deteriorating. But his daughter Bridget says her father flashed “a big grin” to her sister Maggie when
He heard Judge had landed the Giants job.
He had texted John Algeo last Thursday before any of this, offering condolences for his mother’s passing in November and saying “I owe your dad so much. I want to get back and visit soon once the season calms down, and I would just love to talk ball with him.”
Now he’s telling the Algeos he intends to visit as soon as he can.
Gaffney marvels how even though Judge has worked for Nick Saban and Bill Belichick and won five championships, “nothing has changed him one bit” as a person at all.
“He doesn’t forget where he comes from,” Gaffney says.
Judge, his wife, Amber, also have been gracious hosts in their North Attleborough, Mass., home during their time with the Patriots.
They have four children: Sean, 14, Michael, 11, Emma Riley, 9, and Ella Grace, 6.
“I hadn’t seen him in over a year, and Amber said I’ll just leave the door open and you can come in and make yourself at home,” Gaffney says. “That’s the kind of people they are.”
Judge’s friends can give him a hard time, too. He’s one of the guys. Like about the fact that he’s now the head coach of an Eagles rival.
“God forbid it’s the Giants,” Gaffney jokes.
Judge tells the Daily News Thursday: “That’s what they all say, don’t worry. When we all (the Patriots) played Philly in the Super Bowl (two years ago)? I’m lucky my mom cheered for us.”
FAMILY MAN
Judge recently was quoted in the Boston Globe joking that his wife “lives like a widow” around Christmas due to his workload at the office. But a different image sticks in Stairiker’s mind.
A Nor’easter rolled in a year or two back when Stairiker was in Massachusetts, and Judge insisted, “dude, just crash here.”
Fourteen inches of snow fell outside. Judge’s kids were off from school, hanging out and watching TV. And even though Judge had work to do — for demanding boss Bill Belichick, no less — he sat and spent time with his children while taking his calls and watching his game film.
“He was still able to be present,” Stairiker says. “That point was not lost on me. Whenever he’s not on the field or in the office, he gives everything else to his family. It’s the cornerstone of the Judges, and it always has been.”
Now if only someone can find Judge a bulldog, he’ll be able to sneak past security onto the field before this dream ends.