The upcoming NFL season will be one of the wildest in recent memory for New York football fans – and for the first time in a while, Jets fans aren’t the only ones feeling the pain.
A year that began with the New York Jets and the New York Giants both entering the season with high expectations has devolved into a mess that is fitting of the New Jersey sludge surrounding MetLife Stadium.
The New York Jets are now 3-8, the Giants 2-9 and it doesn’t appear that either of these two teams is going to start winning games soon.
Jets fans may be accustomed to such a situation as the NFL regular season approaches its final month, but the collapse of both New York teams is one of the league’s most embarrassing narratives this year.
One team has already dismissed its coach and general manager and now there are whispers about the future of the team’s main man. The other decided to construct a team around a young quarterback and let its premier performer sign with a division competitor, release that quarterback for a meme-worthy backup – placing the head coach and GM in the firing line after only two seasons of a playoff appearance.
It is a level of footballing despair for two of the most high profile organisations in the league, at a time when both teams had so much to play for and demonstrate on the pitch.
J-E-T-S, oof oof oof
For the Jets, this season was the hype of a first full year with one of the game’s all-time great quarterback under center, at last.
In 2023, Aaron Rodgers was traded to the Jets and seemed primed to provide the team with what the Jets thought they lacked – a dynamic, playmaking, veteran quarterback to put them over the top and into Super Bowl contention.
In the second game of the 2023 campaign, though, Rodgers went down with a torn Achilles’ and his year was done in the blink of an eye.
There were weeks of drama over whether Rodgers would be able to make it back last year, but he shut it all down and attention shifted to the 2024 presidential campaign.
The awful injury ended the Jets’ season along with their quarterback, they had a 7-10 record.
The season began with the team on a good note with the team having won two of the first three games. However, when a losing streak began to develop, the Los Angeles franchise decided that change was necessary.
First, head coach Robert Saleh was fired on October 8 after a loss in London to the Minnesota Vikings brought the Jets’ record to 2-3 on the season.
A week later after another loss it was a blockbuster trade for Davante Adams. The star wide receiver had become bored with losing in Las Vegas with the Raiders and had demanded a trade a week prior to the game, but he finally decided to come to the Jets in order to play with his former Packers teammate Rodgers.
The reunion of Adams and Rodgers made green-and-white hearts fly high, but it was impossible to turn the tide. The Jets were 4-5 before their bye week and owner Woody Johnson ultimately decided to fire Joe Douglas in what was the final nail in the coffin on the decision to acquire Rodgers to New York.
As the team prepared to go on a week off, the mood on the Jets was as low as it could go.
After a last-second loss to the Colts on November 17, Rodgers was critical of some of interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich’s decisions but backed them because of his faith in Ulbrich.
When asked by a reporter after the game if he was shocked that the team was 3-8, Rodgers said, “That’s a buzzword, so I’m not gonna touch that in response to what you just said so I’m just going to echo that I’m disappointed.”
For his part, Ulbrich said on November 18 that he and his staff would be doing a “deep dive” on the team to try and get some of the competitive losses during the bye week so they can convert them into victories during the final weeks of the season.
“The moment to take a breath is not yet. We need to look at ourselves, as a society, and really get to the bottom of who we are, and listen to the criticism and learn from the criticisms,” he said. “And that’s not just players, that’s coaches as well and not being stubborn.”
Rodgers has been the focal point of Gang Green cosmos since he arrived to the team after a bitter divorce with Green Bay – the only team he had known before the beginning of the 18th season of his career.
However, the news that emerged when the team was on break suggested that the tide was turning.
ESPN said that Johnson had even pondered in the early part of the season if it was time to sit Rodgers down so that the team could start thinking about the future and building around younger players. On Sunday, NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport said he has no idea if the Jets even want Rodgers back for the 2025 season if the soon-to-be-41-year-old decides to return for one more season.
The reports add up to a stunning reversal for the Jets, who have devoted most of the previous two years to signing players that Rodgers wanted on the team and otherwise deferring to their star quarterback in the belief that he could get them to the Super Bowl.
A Giant Collapse
The 2024 season was a gamble taken by the Giants GM Joe Schoen. After signing quarterback Daniel Jones to a four-year, $160 million contract extension before the 2023 season, Schoen and the team’s front office had to navigate Saquon Barkley, the team’s franchise player and one of the best running backs in the league, entering free agency.
After a decision-making progress that was televised for HBO’s “Hard Knocks”, the Giants finally decided not to match the Philadelphia Eagles offer to Barkley and let him sign for a division rival.
Instead, Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll thought it was best to place the hopes of their team on Jones. By the time the season was ten games in, Jones would no longer be a member of the team.
Following a rather average 2-3 beginning to the season, things have gone from bad to worse for the Giants. Following five consecutive losses, Daboll decided to bench Jones and downgrade him to the third string quarterback in favor of the New Jersey native Tommy DeVito, whose nickname is Tommy Cutlets, the Italian hand gesture sign, and a three-game winning streak in 2023 had endeared him to the Giants fan base.
It was an unexpected decision and Jones appeared eager to look forward, giving a long press release a few days after the release that mentioned his tenure with the Giants in the past tense.
Finally on Friday the team said it was going to release Jones after he himself requested the team owner John Mara to release him.
The move did not exactly yield immediate returns. The Giants were blown away by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday 30-7.
Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield added insult to injury by doing his best impression of DeVito’s touchdown dance after scoring one of the team’s touchdowns, a reference to the memes and GIFs that came out of DeVito’s first season as a starting quarterback last year when injuries sidelined Jones and his backup.
DeVito said after the game that he didn’t see the moment until getting into the locker room postgame, saying, “It is what it is.” It happened last year a little bit and it will happen, I suppose.”
DeVito himself played a very poor game, as would be expected from a third stringer who had not played in a game since the pre-season. He passed for 21 of 31 for 189 yards and no Tds.
Later on, Daboll continued to avoid answering whether he had any remorse for benching Jones. “We’re moved on here,” Daboll said to the media after the game. “I think we all underperformed today and I include myself in that.”
But the harshest criticism came from a team member’s mouth, more specifically, defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence said, “We played soft and they beat the sh*t out of us today.”
The current six-game losing streak and the players’ discontent in the media like Lawrence and the star wide receiver Malik Nabers have placed both Daboll and Schoen in the hot seat. It’s a once-unthinkable situation for Daboll, who has taken the Giants to the playoffs in 2022 and won the Associated Press’ Coach of the Year in his first season as the head coach.
To add insult to injury, Barkley is playing like an MVP candidate in Philly.
Following the Bucs’ destruction of the Giants on Sunday, Barkley rushed for 255 yards, an Eagles record on only 26 attempts and had over 300 all-purpose yards. It was sunny in Philadelphia while it was the salt in the wound of a miserable day to be a fan of the football Giants.
On Sunday, Daboll chose not to answer a reporter’s question on whether he’s getting through to the team or having the right read on how it’s going to perform week to week.
“I understand the question,” Daboll said. “We didn’t do a good enough job. We got to be better.”