Football o’clock

Jets, Giants overlap a new-ish problem

THERE WAS a moment, right around 1:15 p.m. or so last Sunday, when I could have sworn that the Vikings caused Daniel Jones to commit a big fumble and that the Commanders had picked off a Mike White pass. Which was odd because the Giants were really playing Washington and the Jets were actually playing Minnesota.

It was like living in a DirecTV commercial — you know the ones. The one that’s popular now is the “Real Housewives” sacking Dak Prescott and prompting him to flip over a table. There was one last year in which Serena Williams played tennis in a “Matrix” movie.

(If you HAVEN’T seen these ads, then I question if you watch sports at all. It’s like that goofy BMW commercial now in which the grandfather thinks he’s getting a car for Christmas, an ad which is on 17 times every game. By halftime.)

I wasn’t trapped in an advertisement, though.

I was trapped in the residue of the worst spate of New York football since the dark days of the 1970s. The Giants and the Jets have been awful for years, which isn’t exactly a news bulletin. And the past few years, CBS and Fox have broken from a long tradition and had no problem scheduling the Giants and Jets up against each other at 1 o’clock.

There was a time when that would’ve been sacrilege. In the ’70s, even after the NFL relaxed the blackout rule, the Jets sometimes were not on local TV because they were not able to sell out Shea Stadium 72 hours in advance. And both teams were brutal enough that they rarely appeared on “Monday Night Football” in those days.

Still, one would play at 1 and one would play at 4. Every single week. There were some grim years when that meant six solid hours of nothing but brutal football, and only occasionally was there a national doubleheader paired against the late game. It’s probably why “MNF” became instantly popular in New York. And why the Thanksgiving Day games were like tonic for the football soul.

We don’t have to worry about that now. There is the Sunday Ticket. There is the Red Zone Channel. There are bars that have as many as 10 games on at once. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to avoid the Jets and the Giants if that’s what you want, and the past few years, that’s been an agreeable option by Halloween.

And the networks aided that pursuit, scheduling the Jets and Giants as often as they can together at 1 o’clock, freeing up the 4:25 slot for a fully supply of Cowboys/Chiefs/Packers/Bills/Patriots games the past few years.

Of course, this year the Jets and the Giants flipped the script somewhat unexpectedly. They are both good: the Giants 7-4-1 heading into their home game Sunday with the Eagles and the Jets 7-5 as they head to play Buffalo. Both of those games will kick off within seconds of each other, the same way the Commanders-Giants and Jets-Vikings games did last week.

And look, there are a definite percentage of all-in Jets fans and all-in Giants fans for whom this is a nonissue. They will watch their team if the game is scheduled for 3 in the morning. Whatever else is on TV matters not.

But there’s still a strong segment of Jets fans who are at least intrigued by the Giants, and Giants fans who are curious about the Jets, if for no other reason than that’s how we were trained to watch pro football decade after decade. You can certainly understand why the networks have chosen to do this. It makes perfect business sense.

But if you’re someone like me who likes to toggle between the two games … well, your mind plays tricks on you sometimes. Sunday you may wonder why the Jets simply can’t tackle Jalen Hurts, or be pleasantly surprised when your eyes play tricks on you and Daniel Jones slices through the Bills’ defense for a big pickup ... until you recalibrate.

Yes, these are first-world problems. And isn’t it great to have them during football season again?