A decade in the life of Aaron Rodgers tells the sad story of the New York Football Giants. Ten years ago this week, the Giants dismantled the 15-1 defending champion Packers in a playoff game at Lambeau Field, where Eli Manning kicked his second Super Bowl run into a new gear by throwing for 330 yards and three scores.

The other day, Rodgers used his forum on “The Pat McAfee Show” to ridicule the Giants for pulling what looked like a college prank in the middle of an NFL game. On the notion of taking a knee late in a tied game to preserve a playoff berth, Rodgers said, “You know what would make me lose my mind almost as much as that?

“Third-and-9 on the minus-five, let’s go in goal-line personnel and run a QB sneak.”

Michael Jordan never dunked on the Knicks like that.

You don’t want the best player in the league beating you, but you really don’t want the best player in the league belittling you. In other words, it’s a lot more painful to be called a clown show organization by Aaron Rodgers than by Joe Judge.

So it was no surprise that Giants president and CEO John Mara admitted Wednesday he has never been more embarrassed by the product he has put on the field.

“I kept thinking during the season that we had hit rock bottom,” Mara said, “and then each week it got a little worse.”

Until Judge called for those back-to-back sneaks in a shocking show of surrender, betraying everything he’d promised the fans their football team would represent. Strangely enough, even though the entire league and his entire fan base agreed that Judge absolutely had to go after those two non-plays, Mara played down their significance, saying they “weren’t my favorite play calls in the world” and describing them as “just one minor factor in the overall scheme of things.”

Though it seems he has confessed he needs to earn back the fan base’s trust every other offseason, Mara is by and large a truth teller. He admitted that the process leading him to hire the wildly overmatched Dave Gettleman as general manager was too narrow and rushed, and in the end, that hiring did far more to tear down the Giants than anything Judge did.

But Mara might’ve been fibbing when he suggested that the weak sneaks amounted to just another triple bogey on a scorecard full of them. Just as the 17-year run of playoff-free football under Mara’s father Wellington is best captured by Joe Pisarcik’s famous fumbled handoff — and Herm Edwards’ scoop and score — in 1978, these seven double-digit loss seasons out of the last eight will be forever lowlighted by the folly of Judge ordering Jake Fromm to roll over and play dead. Twice.

Judge had said he wanted to be associated with Bill Parcells and Tom Coughlin, the franchise’s two-time Super Bowl champs, coaches who understood that you can play productive football from almost anywhere on the field. Didn’t Judge remember that Coughlin’s decision to play for real from the 1-yard line in 2011 led to Victor Cruz’s 99-yard Christmas Eve touchdown against the Jets and the start of a six-game winning streak that culminated in the Super Bowl XLVI title?

No, it doesn’t matter anymore. What does matter is how the Giants respond to their own humiliation — their new rock bottom — and the early indication is actually encouraging. After the Pisarcik fumble, and a later appearance of a plane flying over Giants Stadium with a banner carrying the fans’ message that they’d had enough, commissioner Pete Rozelle planted a football man named George Young into the middle of a family feud (Wellington versus nephew Tim), and soon enough the Giants started winning.

This time around, Roger Goodell isn’t trying to appoint any such peacemaker (thank heavens), because just about the only positive thing that can be said about the Giants today is that John Mara and Steve Tisch don’t need one. But they do need a general manager, and the fact is, for the first time since Young was installed in February 1979, the Giants will find that person from outside the family. Mara conceded that his franchise would have no chance unless he “completely blew it up and started all over again.” Not only will the Giants hire someone with no meaningful ties to the organization, but also they will hire someone under the age of 50 to punctuate the point that their facility is no longer just another Jurassic Park.

Some people carrying torches and pitchforks are still coming for Giants executives Chris Mara (John’s brother) and Tim McDonnell (John’s nephew), but the new GM (and his new coach) will have far more to do with the team’s failures and successes to come. Mara made it clear that the fates of the All-Gettleman All-Stars, Saquon Barkley and Daniel Jones, will be decided by decision-makers yet to be hired.

“We’re going to get it right this time,” Mara pledged.

We’ll see about that.

But for now, this is progress. Just as in the late 1970s, the Giants had to be embarrassed into making fundamental changes. They are taking their first baby steps in the right direction.