WE KID YOU NOT!
Little brother Jets steal spotlight from Giants with imminent arrival of Rodgers
The Jets are the Giants’ little brother in New York and New Jersey, and everyone knows it. There are two teams here, but this is a Giants town. The Jets perpetually exist in Big Blue’s shadow, as much as they try to live in the light.
The Jets wouldn’t even let the Giants boast the NFL’s worst record on their own from 2017 through 2021, for heaven’s sake.
The Jets joined them in the basement at 22-59 over those five bleak years.
“The Giants pretty much own
New York,” Lawrence Taylor said in this newspaper in 2015. “We’ve got better fans and more fans than the Jets do. We’ve got four Super Bowls behind us. Until they win some Super Bowls, the conversation is over with.”
On Wednesday, though, little brother stepped out of the darkness.
When Aaron Rodgers announced on ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ that he intends to play for the Jets, he immediately stole the New York market until further notice for Gang Green — only two days before St. Patrick’s Day, at that.
Jets owner Woody Johnson is famously aware that his organization is constantly competing for tabloid back pages with John Mara and Steve Tisch, and often losing the fight.
This flips New York’s football totem pole on its head.
And if the Jets sign Odell Beckham Jr. next? Forget it.
If the Giants bring OBJ back, maybe they’ll recover some of their buzz. If they make a deep playoff run, they’ll surely turn heads.
But nothing short of that will compete with the local and national drama of this Rodgers-Jets union that is one trade agreement away from becoming official in Florham Park, N.J.
Of course, the Jets haven’t won anything at the moment, either, and they’re well-known for winning in March and losing in December.
It’s been a long time since the Jets commanded the bulk of New York football’s attention nationwide.
The last time was when the bombastic head coach Rex Ryan led Gang Green to consecutive AFC Championship appearances in 2009 and 2010.
“I have news for you,” Ryan wrote in his book ‘Play Like You Mean It.’ “We are the better team. We’re the big brother.”
Then the Giants won their second Super Bowl in five seasons in 2011.
The Jets’ 2008 Brett Favre dalliance and 2012 Tim Tebow sideshow brought plenty of publicity and eyeballs.
Favre’s 2008 team actually scored 405 points and started 8-3 before bottoming out down the stretch and veering into his infamously salacious off-field texting.
But the reigns of Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning and the Giants’ ferocious pass rush consistently brought the NFL’s eye right back to the team that is headquartered next to the franchise’s shared stadium.
The Giants will have their chance to puncture the Jets’ new hold on the city when they battle this regular season at MetLife Stadium, with the Giants as hosts.
Safety Xavier McKinney already threw some shade at the recent national obsession with Rodgers’ Jets courtship, posting a video on Instagram of the Giants defeating Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers in London last season.
It’s going to take a lot for Big Blue to outshine this new Jets drama, though, whether it works out for Johson’s Jets or spirals into absolute chaos at the feet of Joe Douglas and Robert Saleh.
Good or bad, like it or not, the Jets are now the top football story in town.