Jets, Giants still searching for first wins after big '0-four' to start the season
Jets quarterback Justin Fields, left, fumbles against the Bills on Sep. 14, and Giants quarterback Russell Wilson gets turned upside down against Washington on Sep. 7. Credit: Noah K. Murray; Getty Images/Scott Taetsch
Here’s what we have learned about New York’s football squads through this still very young season: Only one of them can get competent quarterback play in any given weekend — and it doesn’t even matter because they lose anyway.
Yes, the Giants and the Jets both are 0-2, a pitiful reflection of their overall ineptitude and yet a steep disappointment based on where we were less than a month ago. Back then everything was rosy, optimism was high and there was legitimate hope that this season would be different from so many of recent vintage.
Aaron Glenn was the coach who was going to change the Jets. Russell Wilson was the quarterback who was going to fix the Giants. So far everything feels morbidly similar.
This is the fifth season in the past 10 years in which the two teams both have begun the year with two losses. And in one of those in which they didn’t, it sure felt as if they did when Aaron Rodgers was hurt in the 2023 opener.
“Big ships turn slow, all right?” Glenn said this past week regarding his efforts to turn things around.
That’s true. But whenever someone mentions big ships, which is the first one that comes to mind? Right now, it feels as if Rose and Jack had better chances of staying afloat than the Giants and Jets do.
The Jets at least have the luxury of time. Glenn is two games into his tenure; the same goes for general manager Darren Mougey. Frustrations may be mounting, but there also is an underlying patience. It is far too soon to suggest that Glenn isn’t the long-term answer for this franchise that he was perceived to be over the summer.
Does he have a lot to learn and improve upon after his first couple of games as a head coach in the NFL?
Absolutely. Will he?
We still like the odds, even if the Jets don’t come back from their first road game of the season in Tampa with a victory.
“There’s a belief that has to happen amongst the coaches and the players to make sure you just stay focused on what you’re trying to accomplish,” Glenn said. “There’s going to be so many outside noises that have no idea what goes on inside . . . We have to focus on what we’re trying to do and we’re locking arms and we’ll make sure we keep everything inside and not letting anybody infiltrate what we’re trying to do.”
There may even be a bit of a positive to come from the Jets’ inability to win. While they have a solid core of players and already have locked some of them up with second contracts — Sauce Gardner and Garrett Wilson key among them — they are far from a roster that is ready to contend for a championship.
Had they gotten off to a fast start and been headed toward ending their long playoff drought, they could have fallen into the same front office quicksand that consumed the Giants in 2022 when they found immediate success under a new regime and thought, erroneously, that they were better than they actually were. So in a way, perhaps it does behoove the Jets not to win too much this season.
Still, it would be nice if they could play better than they have.
These Giants, meanwhile, feel much closer to the end of an era than the beginning of one. Ownership brought Brian Daboll back for his fourth season with the team, but on the day he announced that decision in January, team president and CEO John Mara also said: “It better not take too long [to improve the product] because I’ve just about run out of patience.”
These first two games hardly were steps toward salving that restlessness, especially not last week’s crushing 40-37 overtime loss to the hated Cowboys. The only thing the Giants brass despises more than losing is having to watch Jerry Jones win.
“Need a good week this week,” Daboll said.
Yes they do.
For a lot of reasons.
The Giants will make their home debut against Kansas City on Sunday night. Who knows what reaction awaits them? In seasons past, they have been booed from their opening drives at MetLife Stadium.
It will be the regular-season MetLife Stadium debuts for Giants rookies Abdul Carter and Cam Skattebo and Jaxson Dart, and the first time Malik Nabers plays in the building since last January (he sat out the two home preseason games). Expect to see a lot of brand-new 51, 44, 6 and 1 jerseys mixed in among the faded 56s, 11s and 10s.
It also is a game being played in front of a national television audience. With celebrities on the field and in attendance, it should be the kind of game that screams “New York Glitz!” Perhaps there will be a sing-off in the suites between Wilson’s wife, Ciara, and Travis Kelce’s fiancee, Taylor Swift.
“We can’t wait for the experience,” Wilson said of his first Giants game at home, even though he already has won a Super Bowl in the building. “We know that it’s going to be a special night. We’re looking forward to that. At the same time, too, it’s ball. We’ve got to be in the moment of playing the game.”
Kansas City also is 0-2 and has lost three in a row dating to the Super Bowl against the Eagles, but it is used to this size stage; the Giants too often have wilted under such glare in recent years.
Of course, the whole downward trend to the shared negative narrative of these two New York teams can change back to positive just as quickly as it soured. The Jets certainly are capable of beating the Buccaneers even with backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor playing in place of concussed starter Justin Fields. And if Wilson can put up the kind of numbers he did last week in Dallas against Kansas City and the Giants’ defense is able to make a few timely stops, they may be able to upset the most dominant team of this decade.
Possibilities are not probabilities, though. Feel free to hope, but brace yourself for more disappointment.
It’s technically still summer until Monday, but this already is shaping up to look like another long losing autumn and early winter for football around here.
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.
