Some Fans Just Want To Watch The Team Burn
New York/New Jersey Football might be at an all time low point this season. They’ve been bad at the same time for a while now, but this year seems to mark a new level of utter filth. It isn’t even the same brand of utter filth. One team is a diseased dead rat in the gutter, slowly decomposing and sloshing down the road with each heavy rain. The other is a dumpster full of rotten food that has rotted out a hole in the bottom leaking a slurry into the alley. I’ll let you decide which metaphor fits which team.
The Jets are, in my humble opinion, probably the worst team in the league. They are a special kind of awful so rarely seen because normally once teams hit this level, people get fired and things change. The Jets have no talent on the roster. What talent they do have is hurt. Worst of all, they are run by an utterly incompetent tyrant. I’ve only watched 2 Jets games this season, plus some scatterings of the other games, so I’m certainly open to hearing what Jets fans want to add, but this feels like a team of people who have just completely given up and do not care.
Sam Darnold’s career might be forever damaged. He’s trash. He’s also throwing to wet paper towels in acid rain. He has no run support, especially now that their perpetually disregarded, misused, and shamed yet talented RB has been cut. Bell marks the most recent victim in a long line of Adam Gase running talent out of town. Robbie Anderson is killing it in Carolina. Jamal Adams fits in perfectly in Seattle. I only hope Frank Gore plays somewhere else to finish his career, it doesn’t deserve to die here. Mekhi Becton took himself out of a game he shouldn’t have even played to begin with. Darnold might be salvageable but it will take a miracle coach or an extended period of time with him on another team. If the Jets do get the #1 pick, Darnold is likely out in exchange for Football Thor.
I don’t think even the most deluded and optimistic Jets fan is hoping for anything except Gase being fired at this point. Gase is the worst coach in the league. He’s an example of “situational friendship Nepotism”, a clunky term I just invented to describe the situation that occurs when a coach or player gets promoted not necessarily on their own merits, but thanks to being close to a genuinely talented person’s achievements. Gase was the OC for Peyton Manning’s record breaking offense. He has weaseled two major HC jobs out of one great season that was actually just Peyton Manning playing his best football. The Jets hiring him was a bad decision at the time and we couldn’t imagine how bad it would actually get.
However grim the Jets are, they do have a light at the end of the tunnel. Gase’s firing is only a matter of time, and they are possibly set up to start fresh with the upcoming draft. This is a team built to get Trevor Lawrence with little competition. The Giants are in a more complicated spot.
Giants fans, even during these recent dark times, have typically been able to turn towards the Jets and go “well, at least we aren’t the Jets”. This is still arguably true this year. The Giants are a better team than the Jets. But that might be a curse and not a blessing.
After 5 weeks the Giants make some sense to me. They look like a team with a new coach that didn’t have a traditional chance to get the team organized. This is a team lacking in a lot of talent, but there exists talent in that roster that can work. The Defense is undoubtedly the bright spot. James Bradberry is playing at an almost all-pro level. The defense has kept the team in every game this season up to a certain point where they are just on the field too much and break. They held the Steelers to an reachable lead until late. They kept the Bears from exploding out after a quick start and gave the team a chance to win at the end. They held the SF injury squad down for a time, but the offense was so bad that the time of possession difference wore them down. They mostly contained the Rams. They played poorly against Dallas, but also got a pick 6. The defense is honestly alright, and if the offense was anything but putrid garbage, they’d be a solid middling-mediocre team right now.
But that offense. My god.
Daniel Jones has severely regressed. He is taking too long to process the field. He’s making terrible throws and horrible decisions. He still gives the ball up at an unprecedented rate. He has zero pocket presence. But he’s not getting any help, either. The offensive line is, again, straight garbage. Thomas has looked overmatched and unprepared as a rookie. Nobody else is helping. None of the replacement running backs are good. Freeman is kinda washed up, Gallman has a ceiling of about 2 feet high though he tries his best. Dion Lewis? Who’s that? Thing is, I doubt they’d be much better with a healthy Barkley. Before he went down, I was getting a bit tired of Barkley’s desire to always hit a home run. Yeah, he wasn’t getting the run blocking he needs, but a lot of his failures were his own fault, trying to get too cute and hit the home run ball when he could just take the chunk yards and set up easier 3rd downs. The dude is spectacular, but he was kind of frustrating too.
Engram is a bust. He can’t block and he isn’t taking a step forward as a receiver. I figured even in Jason Garrett’s offense he’d take a step up, Garrett loved his tight ends. Engram is Jerry Reese’s last mistake remaining on the team. Let him walk. Golden Tate is washed up this year. Shep can’t stay healthy. Darius Slayton is probably my favorite Giant on the team right now, and the only one doing anything. Mad respect to that guy.
Jason Garrett has been an absolute bust at OC. Any rationalized optimism we had is gone by now. He’s bad. Judge? Judge still feels mostly like a non-entity. I won’t judge him on his cranky soundbites, the NY media is cruel and relentless and his history as a Belichick lackey has already doomed him in most people’s eyes. I can’t say I dislike his job so far but…I can’t really say anything. But I do look over at Matt Rhule taking over a team in a similar position with similar problems and watching how great they are rising to the occasion and then look at Judge and go “hmmmm.”
But unlike the Jets, who will soon clean house and start fresh, the Giants are a little more fucked. They just started their rebuild this season, and this season is weird. By the end of the year, if this team hasn’t pulled itself together in some way and is again picking top 5, they will find themselves in a sunk cost fallacy situation. Do you fire Judge, who hasn’t had a true legitimate season to execute his vision, after this one weird year? Do you keep Judge, but fire Garrett, a bust at OC but someone with a lot of experience who also seems like a great guy who could really help keep things normalized? Do you fire Gettleman, who after 3 years has built fucking nothing and should be fired? Gettleman has to go, but do you keep Judge if you fire Gettleman? Do you hire a new GM and let Judge’s fate be decided that way? My preference is that last one. Fire Gettleman, let the new HC decide whether Judge is worth it. My fear is the Giants will pull a few wins out of their asses late and Mara decides to sit on it for one more wasted season of the same staff and team that can’t muster anything.
What a pile of shit these two teams are.
It will always baffle me how Gase got the quarterback whisperer reputation when he was coaching the quarterback known for doing all of his own coaching.
Seriously, it’s not like Tom Moore ever got a chance to be a head coach. Before the season started another Browns fan told me he’d rather they had signed Pete Carmichal than Kevin Stefanski because he had more experience as a coordinator. I brought up Gase and Tom Moore then too. He’s since admitted he was wrong.
He was the OC of the Bears that time Cutler finally cracked 90 in passer rating.
I wonder how much of the initial positive feeling about Garrett as OC was simply relief that he didn’t get picked as HC.
In terms of busts though the one that most surprised me is how little Marc Columbo is getting out of the OL.
The O-line is one of the places I feel most willing to forgive, this unit had zero pre-season time to gel and is learning on the fly against some really good pass rushers so far.
As a Browns fan, I’d like to reassure Jets fans that it can get better, but it took my team three years and as many regime changes to right itself from when it was at basically the same place. And in 2017 the Browns had some actual talent to build around. I’m not sure the Jets do. Jamison Crowder? Maybe? They have a shiny new left tackle who is as good as advertised, but wasn’t supposed to be as good right away as he has been, so that’s a good sign, but they have almost literally nothing else on offense besides those two and the entire defense is trying to get traded or cut.
I thought it was funny a few weeks back when, in its weekly overreaction column, ESPN’s writer said there was no question the Jets and Giants are the two worst teams in the league, but even so on a neutral field he’d probably still take the Giants by two touchdowns.
The most amazing thing about the Giants is how much of their resources they’ve poured into an offensive line that’s absolutely putrid. Since he came to New York Gettleman has exchanged the team’s best wide receiver, a massive, player friendly contract, a second round pick, and the #4 overall pick on four offensive linemen who, combined, have done absolutely nothing for them, and even after all that it looks like their top five draft pick next year will likely be another offensive tackle.
Honestly, I have little doubt that Darnold can bounce back once he’s away from Gase. I have laundry liat of great players who were on the Dolphins and Gase ran out of town and are now doing great or are still on the Dolphins and started doing great when Gase got run out of town.
Darnold will be fine once he goes to a team with a functioning offensive coaching staff and a QB he can actually learn from by sitting for a year. Indy or Pitt, or even New Orleans make a ton of sense from that perspective.
The Jets also at least have Crowder. He does the football kinda good?
I’ll fully admit that I really haven’t kept up with the Giants and Jets this season besides hearing that they’re both trash. But watching highlights from the Giants-Cowboys game and watching the Giants offensive line crumple pretty much every play… yeah.
In other news, this is the third time that the “May we all burn in hellfire” tag has been used. That probably means something even if I’m not sure what.
Dave, as Mara, I don’t think you can hire a GM and let him decide on HC. I think you’ll probably be asking GM candidates about their thoughts on Judge during the interview process. When you finally do make the decision to hire a GM, you already know what they’re going to do, and by hiring that person, you’re approving their plan.
I suppose I could be wrong – maybe the GM candidate says he would need to evaluate Judge and doesn’t express a position either way on him… but I don’t think that makes for a strong interview performance if you can’t answer a question like “How do we fix this mess?”
As a Giants fan it has been another horrible season. All the bright spots you listed Dave have been nice. It is ridiculous how bad our offensive line is. Gettleman has hit on some good players, but the Oline has been so terrible I kind of feel that is enough for me to agree with people who say he should go.
I’m surprised there was no mention of the penalties in the Dallas game. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a big impact with flags/no-calls.
I feel Jamison Crowder deserves some recognition for trying, even if it’s often during garbage time.
Gase’s wildcard season at Miami was a Dead Cat Bounce. Worse than Sparano, WAY worse than Philbzzz… *snrk* sorry, yes, he’s THAT dull…
The only Fins coach he ranks above is Cam Cameron. Under him, Miami could be the only team on the field and they’d STILL lose.
Gase has no business being anywhere near the level of coaching staff. Hell, I wouldn’t let him mix the Gatorade.
Minor point in your well-reasoned rant, but I”m surprised you’d say “Dion Lewis? Who’s that?”. He doesn’t look spectacular anymore, but Lewis was James White before James White for the Patriots, and was a major part in 2 of their Super Bowl wins. Dude was a shifty as anyone in this era at his best, and could take a screen pass or little 2 yard route and absolutely disappear from the defense until he popped on the other side of the 1st down marker or goal line.