The Jets-Giants rivalry is not what it used to be
Giants running back Antonio Williams participates in drills during a joint practice with the Jets in East Rutherford, N.J., on Thursday. Credit: Noah K. Murray
There was a time and a place when the rivalry between the Jets and Giants was as intense and as fierce as any in sports.
No kidding.
It began the very first day the New York Titans became part of the American Football League in 1960, a fledgling team out to earn a piece of the metropolitan area market from the well-established Giants, who’d had their way in this town since 1925 and had previously fended off challenged from the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers of the old All-American Football Conference in the post-World War II era.
The Titans soon became the Jets, and then Joe Namath came to New York and shook the professional football world to its foundations. The Giants now had a legitimate threat on their hands, and there wasn’t a hint that they’d eventually play each other or become business partners in the same league.
And that first time they did face one another? It was positively cataclysmic. Even though it was a preseason game.
It’s 1969, just months after Namath had pulled off the biggest upset in NFL history with the Jets’ 16-7 win over the Colts in Super Bowl III, and the teams scheduled an exhibition game at the Yale Bowl on Aug. 17. While the Jets had captivated New York with their remarkable run to the Super Bowl, the Giants were in the midst of the most protracted era of losing in franchise history.
Coach Allie Sherman was the target of Giants fans’ ire, and chants of “Goodbye, Allie” had reverberated through Yankee Stadium. Sherman and Giants president and co-owner Wellington Mara took the game against the Jets with all the seriousness of a playoff matchup, and the consequences were remarkable: The Jets thrashed the Giants, 37-14, and Sherman was fired even before the regular season began.
The teams faced one another in the regular season for the first time in 1970, and the enmity was again at a fever pitch. With Namath and running backs Emerson Boozer and Matt Snell all out with injuries, the Jets still managed a 10-3 lead in the third quarter when a fight broke out after the Jets stopped the Giants on a fourth-down play near the Jets’ goal line. Giants quarterback Fran Tarkenton hurled the football at linebacker Larry Grantham, and cornerbacks Earlie Thomas of the Jets and Kenny Parker of the Giants got into a fight. The Giants came back to win the game, and afterward, an emotional Mara reflected on the importance of the result.
“You’ve got to be champions of your own neighborhood before you try to conquer the world,” he told reporters.
Fast forward to Thursday under a sun-splashed day at the Giants’ training facility, you’d never know the blood feud that once defined this rivalry. The teams held a joint practice session, a tightly scripted workout in which there wasn’t even the hint of a fight – unlike the brawl that occurred 17 years ago when Herm Edwards’ team brawled against Tom Coughlin’s Giants at SUNY Albany. It was the Jets’ offense against the Giants’ defense, and the Giants’ offense against the Jets’ defense, and it was one big happy family.
Just two days after the Yankees and Mets completed their Subway Series in another thrilling pair of matchups at Yankee Stadium – a real rivalry between teams that might be good enough to meet in the World Series – the Jets-Giants scrimmage reflected nothing but respect and cooperation.
Before the full-squad drills began, coaches Robert Saleh of the Jets and Brian Daboll of the Giants called both teams together to remind them to keep it clean and not cross the line during drills. They broke the huddle on “New York!”
Afterward, Saleh said he’d like to do this more often.
“I know all you guys came looking for a fight,” he quipped. But he expressed a desire to practice again in future seasons. “We want to make a habit of this,” he said.
Near the end of practice, when the teams were scheduled for a period where the two-minute offense would work, they changed their minds.
“I was like, you know what, let’s just condition our guys rather than go through another two-minute period,” he said. “Just wanted to (do that) for the overall health of the team.”
This is not your father’s – or your grandfather’s – Jets vs. Giants football feud.
“Obviously, we share a stadium with them, a city with them, so you get to know some of those guys,” Giants quarterback Daniel Jones said after practice. “It’s not where intense fights are going to break out any second. Guys did a good job of practicing the right way. It’s a healthy practice atmosphere, and guys took care of one another.”
Maybe there will be some tussles on the field when the teams meet in the preseason finale on Sunday at MetLife Stadium. More than likely, though, it will be two teams just trying to get to the regular season without incurring any costly injuries. A far cry from the early days of the rivalry, when the preseason matchups were the final tuneup for when the games counted, and starters would play deep into the second half.
With the teams facing each other just once every four years in the regular season, and now the scripted niceness seeping into the preseason matchups, Jets-Giants is simply not what it used to be.
Kumbaya.
Bring on the regular season.
Bob Glauber retired in 2022 after covering the NFL for nearly 40 years. He was selected in 2021 for the Bill Nunn Career Achievement Award by the Pro Football Writers of America, and is a three-time winner of the New York State Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. President of the PFWA for the 2018-20 seasons, he is the author of “The Forgotten First” and “Guts and Genius.”
