Well, New York is a Jets town anyway.
If Monday night is anywhere near as bad as Sunday was, though, the most anticipated season in the city’s recent football history will quickly go the same direction as the most anticipated season in the city’s recent baseball history.
It is hard to imagine a worse scenario for the Giants than what played out on Sunday, a disaster of a 40-0 loss to the Cowboys that piled on evidence against everything Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll built in Year 1 and was packed with embarrassments big and small.
Even accounting for the Cowboys’ talent on the defensive line, the offensive line turned in a shambolic performance, and Daniel Jones might have been even worse, with two first-half interceptions, a paltry 104 passing yards and a series of missed throws, his confidence clearly shot from early on in the night.
His first completion to a wide receiver did not come until just before the six-minute mark of the third quarter — and was immediately followed by the Cowboys recording their sixth sack of the night.
This, in his first game after the franchise made a commitment of $92 million in guaranteed money through 2026, does not inspire much confidence.
Nor, it must be said, does the infiltration of Cowboys fans at MetLife Stadium. With the Giants promoting a “blue-out,” a first-half third-and-12 inspired a “de-fense” chant from the crowd. Heeding the wishes of the faithful, the Cowboys forced a fourth down.
The analytics were never high on Jones or the Giants last season, a byproduct of how many close wins they eked out in conjunction with mediocre stats for the Duke product.
Boxed into a corner — after all, letting Jones walk after he led the Giants to their first playoff win in more than a decade would have been unanimously unpopular and put the franchise right back to square one — the franchise committed to him, with a potential out after two seasons.
That is how Schoen squared an inconvenient circle over the offseason. The Giants did overachieve last season, and Jones held a fair bit of responsibility for it. He deserved to be rewarded.
But a 9-7-1 record with a negative point differential and only one win in the division always suggested a strong amount of regression could come this season.
Remember, numbers like the Giants’ rank of 23rd overall in DVOA last season are meant to be predictive rather than a direct reflection of how they played in 2022. Traditional stats look backward. Advanced numbers look forward.
Yes, the roster is different now and, on paper, improved. Yes, the Giants proved a lot of people wrong last season. Yes, their execution late in close games meant they made those situations work in their favor, rather than being pure dice rolls.
And yes, one week is just that, and going to Arizona is as good of a get-right opportunity as exists in the NFL.
The Giants still could be, at least, the sort of slightly-better-than-mediocre team they were last year as opposed to the outright terrible team they were on Sunday. No one will complain if the season ends in another wild-card berth and playoff win.
But if there was thought of bridging the gap with the real contenders, then right now that gap looks like it’s approximately 40 points — if the Giants are playing at home.
The Cowboys see themselves as Super Bowl contenders, and might prove to be just that. The Giants can lean on their opposition’s talent as an excuse, but competing with Dallas and Philadelphia is a must if they are going to compete in the NFC East. And if the Cowboys represent a measuring-stick game, well, the Giants pretty clearly did not measure up.
To pretend Sunday didn’t represent a major blow to the idea the Giants can build on last season is to bathe in naivete. There is no excuse for Jones, the special teams, the offensive line and the defense — which you will surely note, represents a sizable majority of the 53-man roster.
It is one data point, not the end of the world and nothing that can’t be undone in due time.
But the underlying trend makes it look a whole lot worse.
Today’s back page
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Buckle up for Jets takeoff
Sunday might have been the only day of the football season the Jets won’t be the biggest story in town.
Monday, though, marks what is probably the biggest game the Jets have hosted since beating Cincinnati 37-0 to secure a playoff spot on Jan. 3, 2010 — a game played at Giants Stadium, in which Brad Smith was the Jets’ leading rusher, Jerricho Cotchery was their leading receiver and Jay Feely kicked three field goals.
The convention says Tuesday morning will amount to the biggest overreaction in Jets history, no matter what happens against the Bills. We should not take it as a given that the convention is correct.
Yes, if the Jets beat Buffalo 45-10, or get blown out 45-10, there will be — with some justification — a pretty big reaction.
But let’s say the Jets lose close, in line with the Vegas odds that have the Bills as a 1 ½-point favorite with an over/under of 45 ½ — let’s call it a rough forecast of a 24-22 Buffalo win. That seems plausible.
We are not in the business of dressing up losses as a positive, and 0-1 is 0-1. If the Jets lose by two and, say, Aaron Rodgers throws three interceptions, that is a lot different from them losing with Rodgers looking in command.
But generally, it is hard to see how the Jets losing or winning by two points — or by one score — would warrant much of a definitive reaction either way.
Such a loss would leave people disappointed, but it is not like losing at home to the Bills in a close game would be reason to think the Rodgers experiment is going the wrong way. Likewise, beating Buffalo in a tight contest would be confirmation the Jets are for real, but they would not wake up Tuesday as Super Bowl favorites.
Maybe, there will be reason for a level-headed reaction on Tuesday.
Or maybe we are engaged in some very wishful thinking.
Martian out, planet accordingly
One of the strangest Yankees wins in recent memory came with yet another blow in their season from hell — and we are not talking about the ignominy of getting no-hit for 10 innings.
Jasson Dominguez, the phenom who has emerged as one of the sole positives as the season has turned for the worst, has a torn UCL in his right elbow, the team announced, and likely will miss at least a chunk of next season with the initial timeline being put at 9-10 months.
It is not impossible Dominguez could return much sooner.
Bryce Harper returned from the same injury in five months. Shohei Ohtani did so in seven. But both players did so at DH, and the Yankees should be careful with their 20-year-old center fielder.
Before the news came down, you could almost throw a positive spin on the day despite the near no-hitter, thanks to a strong pitching performance and the Yankees pulling out a 4-3 win over the Brewers in 13 innings.
Instead, you have to wonder whether going hitless in 10 innings is a precursor to what the Yankees lineup will look like without Dominguez — who hit four homers in his first seven big league games — for the rest of the season.
Or, worse, in 2024.
The US Open’s brake point
Two weeks of captivating tennis finally made a thud Sunday at the tail end.
A day after Coco Gauff fought back to a three-set win in the women’s final to become just the second American woman not named Williams to win the U.S. Open since 1998 — in so doing earning the main spot in any thinkpiece on the future of American tennis — there was Novak Djokovic in the men’s final to bring some inevitability to a tournament packed with anything but.
Djokovic beat Daniil Medvedev in straight sets, 6-3, 7-6 (5), 6-3, earning his 24th career major, moving past Serena Williams for the most by any player in the Open era and tying Margaret Court’s total (13 of which came competing among amateurs).
Aside from a gripping and tightly contested second set in which Djokovic seemed to physically tire and needed to fight off a set point, the match mostly served to reinforce the Serb’s status as the best in the world — which will be made official when he moves back ahead of Carlos Alcaraz to No. 1 in Monday’s rankings.
Really, so did the tournament as a whole.
Alcaraz, who beat Djokovic in a classic Wimbledon final and played him to a three-hour, 49-minute three-setter in Cincinnati last month, is the only player on the tour right now who can consistently craft a challenge to the 36-year-old champion.
But the Spaniard’s consistency is still not at a high enough level to separate him from the rest of the field, especially in best-of-five majors that push his endurance to the limit. So it is not predestined that every major features a Djokovic-Alcaraz final, but it does feel as if you can write in Djokovic to win his first six matches as soon as the draw is released.
That adds up to a landscape in which the bigger picture over two weeks is quite competitive, but the winner feels predictable.
And, unlike on the women’s side, every deep run made by an American comes with the qualifier that there is still a gulf separating Djokovic from the Frances Tiafoes, Ben Sheltons and Taylor Fritzs of the world.
It is Gauff, then, who will carry the banner for American tennis after her win over Aryna Sabalenka — the world No. 1 as of Monday — in the final. The 19-year-old achieved over the last two weeks the astounding feat of living up to hype that has surrounded her since her early teenage years.
Gauff pointed toward that burden after the match in thanking “the people who didn’t believe in me” and saying she had been reading online comments from people who thought she would lose.
That does not figure to get much easier after Gauff became the new standard-bearer for American tennis. But in so doing, she also proved she can live up to the title.
NEWS CREDIT
