Let’s let Giants fans dream a little today, if they can even remember how, that is.
What if their team — the 0-2 Giants — can somehow upset the 0-2 Chiefs on Sunday Night Football, and do that at MetLife? How would everybody around here look at them then, along with the rest of their brutal schedule? Would there suddenly be the crazy idea, against a Chiefs team that hasn’t looked a whole lot better than the Giants have so far, that the Giants might have a season after all?
What if?
If you watched last Sunday’s game against the Cowboys, as wild a game as those two teams have ever played, you know that the Giants really should be 1-1 going into this one against the Chiefs. Would be 1-1 if a defense we were assured was going to be tougher than it’s shown — like a whole lot tougher — had come close to doing its job. And might be 1-1 if Russell Wilson, at the end of a career, scrapbook day for him, hadn’t thrown one more deep ball up for grabs the way Brett Favre used to in big moments at the end of his own wild and crazy games.
Listen: If you don’t think that New York and Jersey aren’t the official snakebitten capital of the pro football world, just consider that each of the local teams wouldn’t be 0-for-September right now except for one 60-yard field goal from the Steelers and then a 64-yarder from the Cowboys. But in the immortal words of Dreamer Tatum in Dan Jenkins’ classic Giants/Jets football novel “Semi-Tough,” what could have happened did. Now they both are where they are and looking to get on the board before October.
The Jets are in Tampa, trying not to go to 0-3 themselves, and prove that all this culture-club talk is more than just talk, as Jets fans keep waiting for some indication on the field that they aren’t employing the wrong Aaron (too soon?).
But the Giants are the ones with the big stage and much bigger audience this weekend, and a real big opponent. They have this shot — one that would have seemed totally unrealistic and maybe even unthinkable coming into the season — to take out Patrick Mahomes the way they used to take out Touchdown Tom Brady and pretty much shock the world in the process. That means shock the world even though the Chiefs aren’t on the board at the present time, either.
If the Giants could somehow pull off this improbable upset, against the team of this era the way the Patriots were the team of the era before this, it would be their biggest win since Jan. 15, 2023, when they went on the road and got a playoff game off the Vikings. You remember that one. It was the game that won Daniel Jones — whatever happened to him? — the equivalent of the lottery because of the way he looked running and passing that night.
Nothing good has happened to the Giants since. The Jets looked miserable themselves last season. But if the Aaron who’s gone, the Rodgers guy Gramps himself, had made just a few clutch throws when his team needed them, the ’24 Jets could easily have ended up winning eight games. The Giants? Looking back, they were lucky to win the three games they did. They had officially become a shell of the team — and the organization — that did knock off Brady and the Patriots twice in Super Bowls.
You know where they are now. Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll are fighting to have this year’s team show enough promise and fight — and, oh by the way, win some games — so that they keep their jobs. Russell Wilson? He was just supposed to be nothing more than a seat-filler for the kid, Jaxson Dart, before Wilson did have one of the great deep-ball games you will ever see, and finally gave Malik Nabers, as gifted a wide receiver as there is in the league, the chance to show just how much speed and game he really has.
Only then Brandon Aubrey kicked one 64 yards and kicked another one in overtime that looked like nothing more than a chip shot from 46. The Giants lost again. And to the credit of Daboll, who remains a good guy in a bad spot, he didn’t want to hear about moral victories any more than Aaron Glenn did when the Jets blew their high-scoring opener against the Steelers the week before. And didn’t act as if his team had won something, even coming close.
“You just get ready to play next week. I mean, you’re going to hurt for 24 hours, that’s for certain,” Daboll said when it was over. “The guys put a lot into it. They left everything out on the field. I respect them a great deal for that. Came up short. You put a lot into it. Credit to those players. You want to get the results that you hope for. Came up short. Let it sit for 24 hours and then you move on.”
Daboll broke in as Coach of the Year, becoming only one of five Giants coaches in 100 years to be Coach of the Year. What feels like another distant Giants memory. Ever since, ever since that Vikings win a week before the Eagles made the Giants look like a JV team, everything has turned to sludge for a once-proud franchise. No one around here would have been surprised after last season if John Mara had fired Schoen and Daboll. He hung with them instead.
Now the Giants are in the same boat as the Jets, in this time when they’ve been no better than the Jets and often looked even worse: They desperately do need to win some games. They need to do exactly what the Jets did, who did get a new coach and new general manager, which means give their fans some hope that this season can be better than last season. Fans around here are sick and tired of hearing that prosperity is just around the corner.
It could all start for the Giants if they can beat a Chiefs team that has won three Super Bowls and lost two others and become one of the storied dynasties of all time in pro football history. And guess what? Even against a Giants team that is more than a decade away from its last Super Bowl, this game on Sunday night means every bit as much to the Chiefs as it does to the Giants, just because an 0-3 start, even for a team with the Chiefs’ resume, would probably be even more shocking than the Giants upsetting them.
If the Giants’ defense is going to show up, and back up all the big talk we did hear about it in the preseason, they do that Sunday night. Wilson? He tries to do it again and hold off Dart for another week. Malik Nabers will get his chance under the brightest possible lights to show that the Chiefs can’t cover him any more than the Cowboys could, maybe because nobody can.
The Giants can’t change last year’s record. Or the schedule. They have won just three of their last 20 games. Still: They get to play a big game on Sunday night. Been awhile.
DUMP THE TUSH PUSH, KELCE STARTING TO SHOW HIS AGE & DON’T LET THE RYDER CUP GET UGLY …
For the last time: The Tush Push isn’t football.
It’s a tractor pull.
We talk all the time, and all season long, about just how long the baseball season is.
Here’s how long:
The Tigers might not make it to the postseason.
And the Red Sox might not, either.
When he dropped that pass last Sunday against the Eagles, a drop that changed everything in that game, Travis Kelce looked like an aging golfer missing a short putt.
Deep into the back nine.
Watching those commercials about Disneyland still being the happiest place on earth.
Really?
Cody Bellinger has been almost as valuable to the Yankees this season as Aaron Judge.
And that is saying plenty.
I keep waiting for the NFL to say that Tom Brady can go stand next to Pete Carroll if he wants to.
That brick-by-brick stuff is powerful imagery from Aaron Glenn, unless this is another season when the Jets are way more — way, way more — than a few bricks shy of a load.
Hold on:
Russell Wilson and Daniel Jones are 1-2 in passing yards after the first two games?
Who had that in the pool?
We live in a world that becomes coarser by the day.
So, one more time, with the Ryder Cup coming to Bethpage Black next weekend, let’s hope a New York sports crowd doesn’t do that Ugly American thing.
Let’s face it, there’s enough of that going around.
The new Slow Horses novel from Mick Herron, “Clown Town,” reminds his readers once again that the books have always been as brilliant as the TV series starring Gary Oldham.
I don’t know how the NBA’s investigation of Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard is going to turn out.
I don’t.
But if you ask me to make an early call, I think both Ballmer and Leonard are looking at a world of hurt
My alma mater, Boston College, played one of our traditional ACC rivals — Stanford – last weekend.
And are coming up on another traditional rival in Cal.
ACC still stands for Atlantic Coast Conference, right?
Right?
You know what?
It might make a lot of sense for the Dodgers to use Ohtani as a reliever in the postseason.
Bring back “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
The way Carlos Alcaraz can play tennis — at the ripe old age of 22 — it’s hard to believe he could have more fun as a blond than he’s already having.
Finally this week:
Happy birthday to our oldest child, Christopher.
He is the great son and brother who’s grown up to be an even better husband and father.
You know what you pray for as a parent?
That.