New York is America’s largest city, but nowadays it feels a lot smaller nozzles.
This is due to the success and rapid development of their crosstown rivals, New York Football Giants. They made it into the postseason, winning a playoff game against the Vikings before losing to the Eagles in the divisional round on Saturday night.
This burns like sweat in the eyes of the Jets in particular, because both teams were in exactly the same situation at the end of 2021.
Both teams finished with identical last places 4-13 records in their respective divisions.
Here the road splits.
The Giants cleaned up the house and fired general manager Dave Gettleman and their head coach Joe Judge. However, the Jets chose to stay with GM Joe Douglas and head coach Robert Saleh.
Joe Schoen has been named the Giants’ new GM and Brian Daboll has been named their new head coach.
Personally, I’m a huge fan of Daboll, and I recommended him to their team president, Bruce Allen, as the next head coach in Washington in 2019 after I met him and he asked me for my ideas.
Daboll struck me as the most unpredictable mind in the game at the time, and it’s what wins in the NFL when you think outside the box.
Both teams picked back-to-back in the 2022 NFL Draft. In today’s pass-happy league, the Jets started with world-best No. 4 cornerback Ahmad Gardner while the Giants took down edge-rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux with the next pick.
This illustrates another key philosophical difference between the two organizations, the Jets opted for the cover corner while the Giants opted to take someone who could disrupt the pocket before the pass was thrown.
Not taking up the fifth-year option on Giants quarterback Daniel Jones’ contract was another big move that set the table for how this all worked.
I loved the move because it cornered Jones. I thought that was a stroke of genius from the new Giants regime. If Jones performed, he would break the bank and the Giants would win, and if he didn’t, the Giants would just carry on and nobody expected anything else.
It was a win-win move by Giants management.
I loved this move so much it prompted me to go to YouTube on May 12th and predict the Giants as a surprise team in the NFC in 2022.
Meanwhile, at the end of May, I predicted that Douglas had built a team for last place rejoined the Jets for a variety of reasons, primarily because of the poor offensive line he had built.
What made these predictions so easy?
Aside from my love for Daboll, I’ve always liked Daniel Jones. In 2019, I rated Jones (Grade: B) and felt like there was something in him for the Giants. I liked the combination of Jones and Daboll so much that I predicted Jones would be “Comeback Player of the Year.” Meanwhile, I predicted that Jets quarterback Zach Wilson would be a surefire bust if he got hit in the first round before being drafted.
“If you’ve got a quarterback, you’ve got a chance,” says the old adage. That gave the giants the advantage. I had a lot more faith in Jones than I did in Wilson, and I knew the Jets stuck with Wilson despite the lack of evidence he had presented and his off-field drama notwithstanding.
The Giants, on the other hand, worked to get rid of their problems. They dealt one of their biggest problems, wide receiver Kadarius Toney, to Kansas City. I had the same Toney too 70% failure rate in preliminary design 2021the same draft as the Jets chose Wilson.
The Giants seriously made the changes necessary to win, while the Jets didn’t.
At the end of the day, the biggest difference between these two teams in New York is very clear.
The Giants admitted they were busted in late 2021. They acknowledged this by making changes to fix the problem. The Jets refused to admit they were heartbroken to the same extent. The Jets refused to make such changes to their org chart, instead crossing their fingers and hoping for the best.
Therefore, the Giants made it deep into the playoffs and the Jets returned to the drawing board.
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