2024 NFL season, like every year, is all about hype and hope, and that applies to Jets and Giants

It was the most exciting buildup to the most sizzling moment to ever take place at MetLife Stadium, a building that had seen a home playoff game, a Super Bowl parade and even an actual Super Bowl played in its 14 years as the epicenter of New York football. But this was something else, a five-month crescendo that began with a Hall of Fame quarterback walking through big glass doors in Florham Park and stretched all the way to him running through a tunnel in the Meadowlands with an American flag in his hand and a motorcycle escort.

The laser show. The fireworks. The chills. All of it was exactly what we’d always dreamed it could be. But this wasn’t a dream. This bold, audacious, glorious scene was our new reality.

Then in about 20 minutes, it was all over. Just like that. Aaron Rodgers took four snaps and fell down, and everything was wiped away.

The Giants were not much better. They may have skipped the pomp the Jets displayed at the start of last season, but their expectations were just as lofty and just as tangible. They were coming off a year in which they had just won a postseason game, they had their quarterback of the future in place with a fresh four-year contract, they had reached a peaceful if tenuous accord with their superstar running back, and the 2022 NFL Coach of the Year was guiding all of it.

Then 2023 became a huge stagger backward rather than a lunge forward.

And now we’re just supposed to do it all again? Fall for the hype? Buy what they are selling?

Apparently. Because the 2024 season is about to start and even jaded New Yorkers have a hard time rejecting the romanticism of an opening day, the clean slate of a 0-0 record and the chance — great or slim — that this year could be the one.

But skepticism and scars won’t allow us to fully embrace the hysteria the way we did last year at this time, when it felt as if we were on the verge of a golden era of New York football, when the always absurd idea of a Jets-Giants Super Bowl was only mildly comical rather than downright hilarious.

After the way everything went down last year — and boy, did they go deep, deep, deep down — it’s hard to replicate the unbridled energy that surrounded this area and oozed from that stadium in East Rutherford just 12 months ago.

But here we are. And here we go.

Again.

The Jets have required a lot from their fans during the nearly 60 years since they last won a trophy of any significance. They have made them endure some of the most hideously inhumane tortures a team can unleash on its supporters. That torn Achilles in Week 1 was just one of the great injustices that have befallen those who bleed green and keep coming back for more punishment week after week, year after year.

Having to go through this Rodgers Restart now becomes the latest big ask from a franchise that specializes in them. Pick up right where we left off? Are you kidding?

Yet that’s what the Jets seem to want from us. It’s what they are trying to get from themselves, too.

“The excitement to get out there and compete regardless is always going to be burning in all of us,” coach Robert Saleh said. “I can speak for everyone; we're all itching to get out there and play some ball. You know, I get it. That moment before the [2023 opener], that pregame electricity, the player introductions, 9/11, all the NYPD, FDNY, everyone out there, it was amazing, and all the emotions we experienced that day. But every year is unique in itself. I think our guys are just as ready now as they were a year ago.”

At least the Jets seem to have gotten better. Rodgers is a year older and coming back from a major injury, but the offensive line is improved in both talent and depth, the young core of playmakers on offense and defense have another year of experience in the league and there are very few gaps on the paper roster.

“Obviously, last season was tough for a lot of people, but it's hard not to get excited when you're around these guys and their energy, and their positivity, and their togetherness,” general manager Joe Douglas said. “I feel like it makes it that much easier to put last year in the rearview mirror.”

The Giants? They reboot with Saquon Barkley gone to a division rival after an ugly and very public divorce (thanks to “Hard Knocks”), with Daniel Jones in a second “prove-it” season in his last three as the brass continues to keep an eye out for better options at quarterback (“Hard Knocks” put that process out there for all to see as well), and the prospect of a team that will celebrate, if nothing else, its 100th season over the coming months looking and playing like something closer to an expansion team than one of the league’s oldest flagships.

“I honestly think this feels better,” linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux said of this preseason compared to last year’s. “When you are coming off a playoff season, everybody has a lot of expectations for you. Now? Obviously, we’re not focused on everybody’s expectations, but it always feels good to fly under the radar.”

Nothing is the same as it was a year ago. Then again, nothing will be the same a year from now, either. If things go poorly for both teams, we may be looking at two new starting quarterbacks and two new head coaches at this point in 2025. Which will land Bill Belichick?

We also could be heralding a defending champion, a team hosting the Thursday night opener and hoisting a banner. Perhaps even while the other tenant in the building looks to build upon its successes and match that feat.

Anything is possible. It is each and every season. That’s what we always tell ourselves as each fall starts to roll in.

After being duped so badly in 2023, though, that ultimate “anything” that is possible just feels a lot less plausible this time around.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.