On one side of MetLife Stadium, the green side, the Florham Park side, you have Amarillo Slim: joyously yammering over his cards, happily willing to let you know how willing he is at any time to shove all his chips in the middle of the table, goading you into matching him so he can double his stack as you slink off to the ATM for more.
On the other side of MetLife, the blue side, the East Rutherford side, you have Johnny Chan, quietly monitoring the table, content to muck his hand when he can’t make a play, biding his time, waiting for the proper moment to strike and take the pot down just as you were fixing to rake it all to your side of the table. And barely breaking a smile while doing so, never breaking a sweat.
They are a fascinating twosome, our football teams, the Jets and the Giants, on the brink of seasons that promise such hope. Just as poker players have their own styles, their own ways, so do these two teams, who are approaching 2023 with similar ambitions and equally jacked-up expectations.
They just have different ways of showing it, separate ideas of how to get to the ultimate destination — which, as fate would have it, will be Las Vegas, the warehouse of dreams and dreamers and dramas of all shapes and sizes on Feb. 11, 2024. Super Bowl LVIII will be held that day at Allegiant Stadium. Technically, the name of the town in which the Raiders’ home field sits is Paradise.
And what’s more perfect than that?
“We know if we put in the work, we have a chance to do some very special things this season, things that haven’t happened for a long time around here,” Jets head coach Robert Saleh said earlier in training camp. “But nobody’s gonna give us a thing. We have to take it. We have to earn it. We’ll be ready to do that.”
“I have faith in our players, and in our staff,” Giants head coach Brian Daboll said in mid-August. “I think we do a good job of blocking out distractions and keeping our focus on the important tasks at hand. That served us well last year, and hopefully, it’ll be the same this year.”
It’s hard to remember a time when both our football teams have generated this much hope and this much belief in July and August. Back in 2011, the Jets were presumed favorites in the AFC before leaking oil, and the Giants were playoff hopefuls who stole the Jets’ mojo on Christmas Eve and parlayed it all the way to a championship.
Since then, there have been many years of collective agony, from which both emerged last year. The Giants were the story of the season when they won nine regular season games and one in the playoffs, leaping a few pages forward in the Joe Schoen and Daboll rebuilding partnership. The Jets were equally as intriguing for 11 games, jumping to a 7-4 start and pole position in the playoff hunt before miserable quarterback play finally caught up to them in a six-game skid to end the season.
The Giants are bringing every important player back, and playing in an NFC in which only the Eagles appear impenetrable — something that is impossible to guarantee across an 18-week season. The Jets, of course, traded for Aaron Rodgers, and threw money at a host of sidekicks to support him, and are hoping that they, along with a powerful defense, can camouflage an offensive line still prone to giving their fans night sweats.
The Jets play in the same division as the Bills and Dolphins, and the same conference as the Chiefs, Bengals, Jaguars and Chargers — among others. That road could well be paved in peril. But having Rodgers does make anything seem possible, if not probable, and when was the last time you could say that as a Jets fan with a straight face?
“I think we’ll be a lot of fun to watch,” Rodgers said a few weeks ago on HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” just another high-profile boulevard the Jets have agreed to inhabit.
“I’m excited about this season,” Jones said last week, and it was the perfect level of milquetoast to satisfy the Giants’ engine. They’ll let the Jets have the back page (and the front page of this section); they’ll worry about three hours every Sunday.
Together the Giants and Jets will sit at the same table, play their own way, be who they are, and see whether, when they officially begin to pull the lever on the NFL’s one-armed-bandit of a season, maybe one of them won’t find itself in the desert come February. Sounds like Paradise.
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September 06, 2023 at 04:00AM
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How Giants and Jets are carving different paths in season filled with hope - New York Post
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