Jets vs. Giants joint practices: 5 matchups to watch
Clockwise, from top left: Sauce Gardner, Malik Nabers, Aaron Glenn and Brian Daboll
The Jets and Giants will hold home-and-home joint practices on Tuesday and Wednesday before meeting in a preseason game on Saturday night. Here is a look at the five most exciting New York-New York matchups in the upcoming events:
SAUCE GARDNER vs. MALIK NABERS
Even though they play two different positions, Sauce Gardner said Malik Nabers “reminds me of myself a little bit.” How so? “He came into the league and immediately established himself as one of the top guys,” Gardner said. “That’s my guy… It’s great seeing him still stay humble with all the success coming his way.”
Nabers is one of the league’s up-and-coming receivers, entering his second NFL season with the Giants after a record-setting rookie year with gaudy stats that somehow felt diluted because of the two games he missed with a concussion and the subpar quarterback play of his three-win team. Gardner is one of if not the best cornerbacks in the league.
The two squared off in last year’s joint practices too.
“I know about him, I know he's one of the top guys that just got paid this year,” Nabers said of Gardner. “I'm just happy to go against him, get some other guys in practice to try to compete with. I know he's a very good corner. I'm just excited to go against him another year.”
While the two stars are soft-spoken and overly complimentary of each other off the field, don’t expect that to continue on the field this week.
Said Gardner: “When he gets on the field and makes plays you are going to know he’s making plays. I’m looking forward to it. I’m a competitor and I know he is too.”
DEXTER LAWRENCE vs. BRAELON ALLEN
The unstoppable force against the immovable object. The 240-pound muscle-bound Braelon Allen, one of the most physical straight-ahead runners around and someone who has been tenderizing the Jets’ defensive front into schnitzel for the past few weeks, will now be launching headlong into the Giants’ massive (listed at) 340-pound Pro Bowl defensive tackle. It will be fascinating to see which side budges or if the two simply meet at a standstill upon contact.
Dexter Lawrence, coming off a dislocated elbow last season, has been used sparingly in training camp but his reps figure to start to ramp upward as the start of the regular season looms. This could be the week when he really gets back to work. There won’t be a better test for him and the revamped Giants run defense than Allen.
It also will be a good gauge of the physicality that head coach Aaron Glenn has been trying to instill in the Jets this summer.
“That's going to be our identity,” Allen said. “That starts up front and with the run game so he's relying on us to kind of set that tone… But that's part of my game that's already kind of instilled in me, so nothing new."
ABDUL CARTER vs. OLU FASHANU
Two old Penn State teammates meet for the first time in the NFL as Abdul Carter, the third overall pick who has quickly become a centerpiece of the Giants’ defense, should get at least a few reps against Fashanu, the Jets’ first-rounder last year and now the starting left tackle.
You’d think they faced each other often in practices in college, but Carter was mostly an inside linebacker during his stint there and only dabbled as an edge rusher until last season when Fashanu was in the NFL. Still, Fashanu saw enough in those limited reps to know what he and the rest of the tackles in the league are in for when facing Carter.
“It’s a different type of speed coming off the edge, you know?” Fashanu said. “Someone that is almost as fast as the DB coming off the edge, and as a tackle, that’s probably like the number one concern you have before the play even starts. He has a really good change of direction. He knows how to manipulate a lineman to get him to keep on kicking outside so he can go inside . . . He’s very special.”
JUSTIN FIELDS vs. RUSSELL WILSON
OK, so they won’t actually be going against each other in any drills or reps. But they do share a narrative arc having been teammates and jostling for the starting job with the Steelers last season… then both abandoned by Pittsburgh in favor of Aaron Rodgers this season. Those decisions brought the two quarterbacks to New York where they are now shouldering the immediate hopes of their organizations.
Justin Fields began last year as the Steelers’ starter and in six games the team went 4-2. But Russell Wilson replaced him at that point and steered Pittsburgh to the playoffs while Fields came in for a smattering of running opportunities (he had seven carries) and attempted just one regular-season pass the rest of the way.
Both were available to the Jets and Giants this offseason, and each of their new organizations made the choice of the direction in which they wanted to head. This week we’ll get the first hint of which quarterback and team won that reshuffling.
AARON GLENN vs. BRIAN DABOLL
This will be the first on-field clash between New York’s two head coaches and, depending on how things play out in the next few months, potentially their last. The two men are at very different places in their trajectories with Glenn a rookie enjoying something of a honeymoon and Daboll coaching, perhaps, for his job in his fourth season with the Giants. Daboll can certainly advise Glenn to enjoy the early love because as the 2022 NFL Coach of the Year has learned quickly, without the winning, it dries up quickly.
They are also a contrast in backgrounds: Glenn was a decorated NFL cornerback who rose through the league as a defensive coach and coordinator while Daboll (although a safety in college at the University of Rochester) comes from an offensive coaching background.
The most interesting part of their meeting this week, though, will be in the tempos they have been establishing in training camp so far. Glenn has had the Jets tackling to the ground in drills and team reps, hoping to toughen up a team and stress fundamentals, while Daboll has gone with a more traditional technique of wrap-and-release on defense. Which pace will the teams play at this week?
“Well, that's something me and Daboll will make sure we talk about,” Glenn said. “We want to make sure we protect the players at all costs.”
Said Daboll: “It’s good to go against different schemes, different players, matchups, as long as you practice the right way.”
But will that be the Jets’ way? Or the Giants’ way?
The last time there was such a difference was when the Jets rode up to visit the Giants in Albany in 2005 and the two teams almost immediately began brawling while Tom Coughlin and Jets defensive coordinator Donnie Henderson were screaming at each other. The result of that was a 17-year span without joint practices between the two teams.
We’ll see what happens this time.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
