The Big Awful: New York’s football teams are spiraling
By Kyle Feldscher, CNN
(CNN) — The 2024 NFL season is shaping up to be one of the most chaotic years in memory for New York football fans – and, for once, it’s not just the Gang Green faithful who are drowning in disappointment.
A year that started with both the New York Jets and the New York Giants feeling optimistic about the season ahead has spiraled into a mire that befits the northern New Jersey swamps near MetLife Stadium.
The Jets are 3-8, the Giants 2-9 and neither team looks like they’re going to be pulling themselves out of their tailspin any time soon.
While Jets fans may be used to such dire straits as the NFL regular season enters its final full month, the implosion of both New York franchises makes for one of the league’s most cringeworthy storylines this year.
One team has already fired its coach and general manager and is seeing rumors start to swirl over the future of the team’s central figure. The other decided to build around a young quarterback and let its best player sign with a division rival, before cutting that quarterback in favor a memeable backup – putting the head coach and GM on the hot seat just two years after a playoff run.
It’s a staggering level of footballing failure for two of the most high-profile organizations in the league, coming in a year when both teams had so much to play for and prove on the field.
J-E-T-S, oof oof oof
For the Jets, this season was the promise of a first full year with one of the game’s greatest ever quarterbacks under center, finally.
Aaron Rodgers was traded to the Jets in 2023 and appeared ready to give them the dynamic, playmaking, veteran leader that the franchise felt was needed to push it toward Super Bowl contention.
On the second play of the 2023 season, however, Rodgers tore his Achilles’ tendon, and his season was over before it really got started.
There were weeks of drama over whether Rodgers would be able to make it back last year, but ultimately he shut it down and heads turned toward the 2024 campaign.
The devastating injury took the Jets’ season down with their quarterback, finishing 7-10.
The season started off promising, with the team going 2-1 in its first three games. But as a losing streak started to gain steam, the franchise’s front office decided a spark was needed.
First, head coach Robert Saleh was fired on October 8 after a loss in London to the Minnesota Vikings dropped the Jets 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 grown tired of losing in Las Vegas with the Raiders and had requested a trade a week before, eventually agreeing to come to the Jets to be reunited with his old Green Bay Packers teammate Rodgers.
The reunification of Adams and Rodgers sent green-and-white hearts soaring, but the tide could not be turned. The Jets lost four of five heading into their bye week and eventually owner Woody Johnson made the call to fire general manager Joe Douglas in what was a devastating final verdict on the decision to bring Rodgers to New York in the first place.
Heading into their week off, the mood on the Jets was downright dismal. After a last-minute loss to the Colts on November 17, Rodgers expressed disappointment with some of interim head coach Jeff Ulbrich’s decisions, though ultimately saying he supported them because he trusts Ulbrich “implicitly.”
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 November 18 that he and his staff would be using the bye week to do a “deep dive” on the team to try and turn some competitive losses into wins during the final stretch of the season.
“The time for taking a deep breath is not yet. We gotta take a deep dive into who we are and be completely honest and hear the criticism and grow from the criticisms,” he said. “And that’s not just players, that’s coaches as well and not being stubborn.”
Rodgers has been the central figure in Gang Green universe ever since he came to the team following an acrimonious split with Green Bay, the only team he had played for over the first 18 seasons of his career.
But news reports that broke while the team was on its bye pointed to a changing of the tides.
ESPN reported on November 20 that Johnson had mused earlier in the season about whether to bench Rodgers in order to start moving on toward younger players. On Sunday, NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport reported that it’s unclear if the Jets even want Rodgers back for the 2025 season if the soon-to-be-41-year-old decides to return for another season.
The reports amount to a staggering about-face for the Jets, who have spent much of the previous two years pursuing players that Rodgers wanted on the team and generally giving their star quarterback tons of leeway in the hopes that he could lead them to a Super Bowl.
A Giant collapse
The 2024 season amounted to a risky bet made by Giants GM Joe Schoen. Having just handed quarterback Daniel Jones a four-year, $160 million contract ahead of the 2023 season, Schoen and the team’s front office faced the free agency of Saquon Barkley, the face of the franchise and one of the most talented running backs in the league.
After a decision-making progress that played out in front of cameras for HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series, the Giants ultimately decided to not match the Philadelphia Eagles’ offer to Barkley, allowing him to sign for a division rival.
Instead, Schoen and head coach Brian Daboll decided to put their team’s hopes on Jones’ shoulders. Ten games into the season, Jones would no longer be on the team.
After a middling 2-3 start to the season, the wheels have absolutely fallen off the Giants. After five straight losses, Daboll announced the decision to bench Jones, demoting him to the third-string quarterback, in favor of Tommy DeVito – the New Jersey native whose nickname (“Tommy Cutlets”), Italian hand gesture celebration and three-game winning streak in 2023 had made him a fan favorite among the Giants faithful.
It was a shocking decision and Jones immediately seemed ready to move on, delivering a lengthy statement a few days later speaking of his time on the Giants in the past tense.
On Friday, the team announced that it would be releasing Jones after he asked the team’s owner, John Mara, to let him go.
The move did not exactly pay dividends in the short term. The Giants were steamrolled by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday, 30-7.
Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield rubbed salt in the wound by mocking DeVito’s signature celebration after scoring one of the team’s touchdowns, a nod to the memes and GIFs that came out of DeVito’s first run as the starting quarterback last year when injuries knocked Jones and his backup out for the season.
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 kind of happened last year and it’s going to happen, I guess.”
DeVito himself played an extremely mediocre game, as might be expected by a third-stringer who had not seen game action since the preseason. He threw 21-for-31 for 189 yards and no touchdowns.
Afterward, Daboll repeatedly dodged questions about whether he regretted benching Jones. “We’re moved on here,” Daboll told reporters after the game. “We didn’t do a good enough job today all around, and that starts with me.”
But the more damning assessment of the team’s performance came from defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence, who told reporters, “We played soft and they beat the sh*t out of us today.”
The now-six-game losing streak and open grumblings in the media from players like Lawrence and star wide receiver Malik Nabers have put Daboll and Schoen both on the hot seat. It’s a once-unthinkable situation for Daboll, who led the Giants to the playoffs in 2022 and won the Associated Press’ Coach of the Year award in his first season as a head coach.
To make matters even worse, Barkley is having an MVP-worthy season in Philly. After the Bucs blew the Giants away on Sunday, Barkley rushed for an Eagles franchise-record 255 yards on just 26 carries, finishing with over 300 total yards. While it was sunny in Philadelphia, 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.”
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