Pretenders to contenders: Jets AND Giants have Super aspirations

Garrett Wilson, fresh off his Offensive Rookie of the Year campaign, was asked on the first day of Jets training camp this summer about the team’s obvious but suddenly overt desire to win the Super Bowl. His initial impulse was to zip around the question the way he does defensive backs without giving a direct answer. That’s how most players on most teams he’s been on have handled similar situations going all the way back to his days at Ohio State.

Sure, most outsiders are excited about what the Jets have done this offseason and the potential they have to win their first title since 1968. But why add to that weight as a player? Why state such lofty goals out loud?

Then Wilson was informed that just moments before he stepped to the microphones his new teammate and fellow wide receiver Allen Lazard had already made the audacious statement about where the Jets expected this season to end up. That gave Wilson some freedom.

“I love that Allen is doing that,” Wilson said. “It makes it easier on me. I didn’t want to say anything, but I’m glad Allen did it first. I’ll go next, for sure.”

He did.

“I ain’t gonna fake it,” Wilson said with his newfound vocal courage. “That’s what we play the game for. I play to win the game. I ain’t gonna beat around the bush. We want to win a Super Bowl. You don’t make moves in the offseason like we did unless you want to get there … Personally I think it’s OK to talk about that. If you want to go get that [expletive], get it. Talk about it. It’s cool.”

The Jet-aissance has taken some getting used to, but at this point everyone seems comfortable talking openly about the high expectations both internally and otherwise.

Over at Giants training camp, they were grappling with the same topic. A year after making the playoffs for the first time since the 2016 season and winning a postseason game for the first time since the 2011 season, months after signing their new franchise quarterback to a $160 million contract while also securing Dexter Lawrence and Andrew Thomas to long-term deals as well as retaining the service of Saquon Barkley for the coming season, the question about where this is all headed has popped up many times.

Sterling Shepard, the longest tenured of the Giants, was unapologetic when asked about the aspirations of this team.

“Our ultimate goal is to put a banner up here,” the wide receiver said, pointing to the four that hang in the Giants’ fieldhouse, one for each of the Super Bowl-winning teams. “So yeah, it was great making the playoffs. It’s been a while. It’s been since I was a rookie that we’ve made the playoffs, so it was a great accomplishment. But ultimately that’s not what we’re setting out to do when the season starts.”

Shepard went so far as to say that coach Brian Daboll tells them the same thing on a daily basis.

“Exactly what I just told you is what he tells us,” Shepard said. “That’s what our goal is. It’s not to make the playoffs, it’s to put a banner up here. Everybody knows that and that’s the reason why we play this game. It’s pretty clear.”

That kind of talk may fit in better in Florham Park than in East Rutherford. And Daboll, who grits his teeth to maintain a “day-to-day” narrative in his public remarks, half-jokingly (or maybe one tenth-jokingly) reprimanded Shepard about going off script, not to mention having dragged his coach into it.

“I’d say Shep maybe confused [the message] with ‘Let’s go out and have a good practice,’” Daboll said, his face red with anger.

Two teams. Two approaches. One goal.

And, for the first time in a long time, one realistic goal for both.

At this time last year the Jets and the Giants were tied for the worst combined record in the NFL over the previous five seasons, each 22-59. Twelve short months later they are each on the rebound and among the handful of teams with a true opportunity to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in Las Vegas come February.

Welcome to the new age of New York football.

The Jets aren’t only the louder of the two teams, they are probably the better of them. The addition of Aaron Rodgers and a slew of receivers who came along with him gives them what they were missing last year when they had a championship-caliber defense but chagrin-inducing quarterback play. They are a compelling story not just because of how good they can be, not just because of how quickly they have transformed themselves, but because of how finite their opportunity to capitalize on all of it appears. While Rodgers has talked openly about playing multiple seasons for the Jets, he’s still going to turn 40 years old later this season. And, lest anyone forget, despite how strong he has looked in camp practices, he is coming off one of the worst seasons of his career in 2022.

Yet it’s the Giants who may be closer to actually getting to a Super Bowl than the Jets. There are several reasons for that statement, key among them: Kansas City, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Baltimore. There is considerably more traffic on the road to the big game in the AFC, and that’s the avenue the Jets have to contend with. They also have a very difficult regular season schedule. While there are a handful of heavy obstacles in the NFC, including Philadelphia and San Francisco, should the Giants make the playoffs they would likely have an easier path to Vegas than any the Jets would encounter.

Getting to those playoffs may be tougher for the Giants, though. They are still the third best team in their division, have yet to prove they can beat the Eagles or Cowboys with any regularity, and despite a financially-affirmed belief in Jones, have put that faith in a quarterback who threw just 15 touchdown passes in 2022. Three of those came in his final two games of the regular season against the Vikings and Colts, two of the worst defenses in the NFL. Even with those performances he was a one-touchdown-a-game quarterback in a sport where the best teams get three or four from the position on a weekly basis.

Still, it’s hard not to sit back and enjoy what is happening here. The Jets and Giants were jokes. Now they are contenders.

In 2011 the Giants and Jets met in an epic Christmas Eve game at MetLife Stadium. The Jets were coming off back-to-back AFC title game appearances and the Giants were three-plus years removed from their most recent Super Bowl. Both teams needed the win to advance to the postseason.

It was a crossroads moment for the two franchises who headed from there in different directions. The Giants won and went on to win another championship. The Jets lost and began their quick sink to the bottom.

Eventually the Giants would meet the Jets in those depths of football’s dungeon and together they would flounder there for some time.

Now, though, they are both returned to prominence. Both are enjoying the optimism of potential. Both are within reasonable reach of another trophy for their respective cases.

And yes, they’ll even meet again in this regular season, facing off in late October. It could once more be a season-defining, era-defining moment for the two teams.

Who knows where they’ll head after that game. Perhaps, if they are both lucky, back on the path toward the same destination. Maybe even toward a rematch?

Vegas has a New York, New York resort on the Strip. Could it have a New York, New York Super Bowl in its future?

No, that’s too much to even think about, nevermind say out loud or write here with any kind of conviction. It’s a ridiculous conceit. It will never happen.

But just like Wilson on the first day of camp, hey, if somebody else wants to go first with that prediction, it’ll be much easier to be next.

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.