CAN’T WIN WITH THESE PLAY CALLS FROM GARRETT & THE FUTURE OF JETS-PATS STARTS NOW ...

Jason Garrett is one of the best people I have ever met around the NFL, a gent of his sport all the way back to when he was still playing quarterback.

He’s not the one who picked the players on the Giants offensive line, not the one who took Saquon Barkley with the second pick of the draft, or Daniel Jones at No. 6.

But the play-calling we saw from him after the interception on Thursday night, when the Giants had a chance to score a touchdown and force the Washington Football Team to have to score a touchdown to win looked a lot of what we saw from the Cowboys when he was in charge there.

Run up the middle.

Run up the middle.

Slant pass that wouldn’t have gotten the Giants to the sticks even if Jones had completed it.

If the Giants get a first down there, the game is over, and nobody has a chance to jump offsides while the other team is trying to kick the winning field goal.

And by the way?

The coach, Joe Judge, talked after the game about how passionate football fans are around here, and how there are NFL cities where by Tuesday, they don’t even remember if there had been a game the previous Sunday.

And I’m curious: Which cities, coach? My friend Barry Stanton says that in April, we all thought the Yankee bullpen might be the difference in the race, and it turns out we were all right. One more Yankee thing: Gary Sanchez does know that the position of catcher requires him to actually catch, right?

You know how Jets fans should look at Pats vs. Jets on Sunday?

They should look at this as the beginning of a whole new rivalry against the Belichicks.

The Jets know they can’t win the past from the Patriots.

Maybe the future.

There is a tried and true tennis expression that covers what we saw last Sunday between Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev in the U.S. Open men’s final:

It’s why they put the net up. On the occasion when Medvedev got to play the match of his life, he played the tennis of his life.

For this one night, everything that Djokovic was trying to do, Medvedev was doing better. Finally today:

Happy birthday to our oldest son, Christopher.

His actual birthday was on Friday, and next Saturday, he becomes the first of our children to be married, in a church just a few miles from where his mother and I were married.

It will be a wonderful moment for him and his bride, Kim, and a wonderful moment for two families.

As a parent, you always wonder what kind of story your children will write for themselves.

My wife and I would have signed up for one like this.

Twice.

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Mike Lupica’s new Jesse Stone novel, Robert B. Parker’s Stone’s Throw, made its debut at No. 19 this week on the USA Today Best Seller list and No. 6 on the Wall Street Journal list for Fiction E-Books.