The NFL’s Wild Card Weekend is over, and the playoffs move to the Divisional Round. Neither NY-area NFL team is involved, and that’s not something new: it’s a pattern. Will that change? I say it won’t, and here’s why.
Fans of the eight teams still in the hunt are hopeful and excited. For the others, the season is over. For NY-area fans, “over” has big stretch marks on it, and that’s because New York is an NFL graveyard.
Once again, the Jets are looking for a head coach and a new general manager in another “Wash, Rinse, and Repeat” episode. Jets fans know this: as long as Woody Johnson is in charge, it will never get better.
The Jets’ problem starts and ends with Johnson. Coaches and executives come and go in the team’s 14-year playoff drought. What makes anyone think the Jets owner will get it right when he always gets it wrong? Plus, it’s hard to get excited about no matter who becomes the next general manager and head coach.
If Johnson ever sold the Jets to successful Mets owner Steve Cohen, you can say there’s hope. Unfortunately, he’s not selling, and it’s scary that he wants his sons to own the team eventually. It is not good when a Jets fan hears stories about Johnson being too involved and giving his teenage sons a say. I guess that is one reason it’s hard to get executives and head coaches to come to the Jets. Whoever takes those jobs deserves prayers.
The Giants, on the other hand, stink and are unwatchable. Inexplicably, Giants owner John Mara decided to retain the incompetent duo of general manager Joe Schoen and coach Brian Daboll. Shut up about their first season. It seemed like 20 years ago. The Giants trended downward in the last two seasons, and Schoen’s next great personnel move will be his first. His first two draft classes have been a bust, which explains why the Giants are in a dark place. Why should we trust him and Daboll to draft a quarterback? What’s more, for the Morashs and Dottinos of the world who want to hail Schoen for drafting Malik Nabers and Tyrone Tracy Jr., let’s remember those guys did not elevate the team to anything good this year.
Daboll has shown me he can’t coach. His players clearly didn’t play for him at all this year. The Giants head coach is overrated as an offensive guru. Could it be that Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen made Daboll than the other way around? I can’t come up with any other quarterback that flourished under Daboll.
What’s indicting about this Giants administration is that I can’t name a player who has developed into a star. But Schoen and Daboll acted like used car salesmen when defending their work body last week. For Mara to be okay with their work and have them stay on, it shows he has low standards of what the Giants should be. His late father, Wellington, would be embarrassed.
It stinks that the season ends before Halloween every year. Perhaps even worse was 2024, when expectations were vanquished in exchange for an ESPN weekly show that presumably was legit but regularly became “Nonsense with Aaron.”
Could it get even worse before it gets better? If we’re talking about the number of seasons before things turn around, I’ll take the over.
