There have been worse moments for the Jets than this, because they still have 1-15 in 1996 on their permanent record before Bill Parcells came back to town to save them. There was the 1976 season for both the Jets and Giants, when both of our teams ended up 3-11. It was just three years ago that both teams finished 4-13, a season that right now is starting to feel like the good old days around here.
But there has never been a time in New York/New Jersey football that feels drearier and lousier than this. Here is the kind of season it is, six games left for both our teams, starting with a festive Thanksgiving Day game between the Giants and Cowboys down there in Jerry’s World, where they’ve sure got problems of their own:
After the dumpster fire into which Woody Johnson has turned this Jets season, his Jets take a weekend off for their bye and the Giants turn in a performance against the Bucs, at home, that felt like any other low point the franchise has ever had, and that means all 100 years of it.
The other day on ESPN, noted Jets fan Mike Greenberg said that almost as impossible as it was for him to believe after what he’d seen from his team so far this season, this was his sentiment after watching Giants vs. Bucs:
“At least we’re not THAT.”
“That” meant the Giants, at this moment when fans of both Greenberg’s Jets and the Giants still share this one overriding sentiment:
Thanks for nothing.
Since the beginning of this season, one that a lot of people — awful lot — somehow saw as Super-Bowl-or-bust, the Jets have gotten rid of their coach, their general manager, their offensive coordinator and, according to a report in The Athletic, entertained the notion of benching Aaron Rodgers after just four games. Now Rodgers is saying that if he plays next season, at the age of 41, he’d still prefer playing for the Jets, which has most Jets fans I know wondering what the good news is.
At least the Jets didn’t lose last Sunday, in this stretch where they’ve managed to win just one game in the past two months. No, they sat out Week 12 and watched as we all did as the Giants were as non-competitive, at home, as they had been in Week 1 against the Vikings. The Giants lost that one 28-6 to the Vikings. They lost this one to the Bucs 30-7.
Since the end of last season, they have lost Daniel Jones, the quarterback once taken with the sixth overall pick of an NFL draft and one to whom they turned over the next six seasons. They have lost Saquon Barkley, not just lost him but lost him to the Eagles, for whom he still has a chance to be the MVP of the whole league. They have lost Xavier McKinney, who is leading the league in interceptions for the Packers. A little over a year after they traded Leonard Williams, he has five sacks for the Seahawks, and had two-and-a-half just last Sunday against the Cardinals. And it is worth pointing out, once and for all, that decisions about all of them didn’t make themselves, or get made in a vacuum. The front office made them and ownership signed off on them.
From behind the scenes at MetLife Stadium, you keep hearing that the Giants believe they are just one quarterback away from turning things around. Then the team, with a third-string quarterback under center, goes out and embarrasses itself the way it did last Sunday, and makes the rest of us believe that the Giants are as wrong about that as they’ve been wrong about so many other things, not just in the last year, but over more than a decade when they’ve lost their way the way they have.
You know what really happened with Daniel Jones the other day? He got released with time served.
The Jets might not be them. But right now they aren’t much of anything, either. It is easy to pin a lot of this — not all, but a lot — on Rodgers, whom Woody Johnson did everything except adopt. But even Rodgers, in this diminished state, has found out what it is like to be a Jet, to be in this kind of organization, and to have to operate without real coaching, the kind the great Patrick Mahomes gets with the Chiefs.
Because even in a season when Rodgers has acted like it is some kind of felony to throw the ball down the field, even with those underthrown balls that cost the Jets the Vikings game in London and the same kind of game-loser against the Bills, his stats actually aren’t all that far away from Mahomes’, who gets to play for one of the great coaches of all time in Andy Reid:
Rodgers is 241-for-380, 2,442 yards, 17 touchdown passes, seven interceptions. Mahomes is 266-for-381, 2,673 yards, 18 touchdown passes, 11 interceptions. Of course no one would suggest that Rodgers, on the eve of his 41st birthday, is still anywhere near Mahomes’ weight class. But guess what really happened to Rodgers, who came here looking for (gang) greener pastures?
He found out, in all ways, what it’s like to be a Jet.
This isn’t 1-15. It just feels like that, even if the Jets surprise us and win a couple of games the rest of the way. But as bad as the Jets have been, the Giants have been worse. They only have fired a quarterback — at least so far — in a season when Woody Johnson has fired everybody except himself.
Again: Since the last time the Jets made the playoffs, they have had one winning season. Since the Giants last Super Bowl, they have had three winning seasons. There have been other lost seasons around here. Not one that felt worse than this. Thanks for nothing.
