This time a year ago, there was genuine excitement among New York football fans on both sides of the aisle.
Jets fans were enjoying every bit of Aaron Rodgers' weekly adventures in “Hard Knocks” and dreaming of all the possibilities that could come. Giants fans were basking in the joy of a 9-7-1 playoff win and brimming with faith in their partners in football's dream factory: Sean and Daboll.
It took four plays for the Jets' optimism to be dashed when Rodgers' Achilles snapped like a lampshade and he stumbled to the turf. And as bad as it was, the Jets' hopes of a failed season lasted longer than the Giants' because, on the same field just over 24 hours earlier, the Cowboys had toyed with Big Blue, crushing them 40-0.
Coming into the final day of summer, it felt like another season had already ended. The teams combined for 13 wins, and by the time the season was over, it was hard to even remember any of them. By the time it was over, Giants fans could only root for Jersey native Tommy DeVito to continue imitating Jeremy Lin as best he could.
By season's end, Jets fans who had chuckled watching DeVito try to beat the Jets in late October with what was essentially a Navy playbook: run left, run right, poke in the gut, wished they could have had DeVito on their side, given the quarterback situation they were forced to watch on a weekly basis after Rodgers disappeared.
“We have higher expectations,” manager Brian Daboll acknowledged when the Giants' 6-11 season was mercifully terminated, but the Giants got one last laugh in Week 18 when the Eagles lost.
“This is unacceptable,” coach Robert Saleh said after the Jets' struggles halted at 7-10 after they beat Bill Belichick again in an eerily similar, hard-fought battle in the final week at New England.
There Should Expectations are high here and most of what we got was really do not have That's acceptable. With a few exceptions from the Giants, that's exactly what has been expected of New York football season since the Giants won their second Super Bowl against the Patriots in February 2012.
So this year there will be a little less festivity among green-chasers and a lot less sun-soaking among blue-robed devotees as summer gives way to autumn.
That's understandable for the Giants, who, although they won't publicly acknowledge it, are currently deep in a tear-and-rebuild rebuild that was, after all, postponed as it would have been planned last year because they couldn't just throw the previous year's 10-win season off the Golden State Bridge.
Daboll may have a plan up his sleeve for us. With the Eagles in decline, the Cowboys on the decline and the Commanders leaning on a rookie quarterback to show the way, the NFC East could become the NFL's Baltic Boulevard, much like 2020, when Washington won seven games to become the champion.
There are a lot of possibilities, but it would be nice if the Giants had a surprise up their sleeve.
But mostly, it's the Jets. They're not just a “now” team, they're not just a “now” team, they're basically a “now” team in real time. Rodgers returned and played great in training camp… but by the time he takes his first snap on Monday night in Santa Clara, it will have been exactly 364 days since his last snap. And we all know how that went.
But they have on their side on offense Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall, two players who went early in nearly every fantasy football draft over the past few weeks, a much-improved offensive line and a stout defense that has been fighting a seemingly impossible battle to erase the reality of their terrible quarterback play for two years.
Yes, the Jets need Rodgers to play at least 15 games, maybe all 17. Yes, another injury to Alijah Vera-Tucker, Hall or any of the defensive mainstays would change things drastically, and it would be nice to have Haason Reddick in the mix, of course.
But for now, the Giants seem like the best bet to make New York football watchable again. If the Giants can get seven or eight wins and still play meaningful games in late December, all the better. Both teams look good in early September, but early January will be crucial, not to mention how they get there from here.
