New York sports in 2023: There is no joy in Dudville
Giants quarterback Daniel Jones, Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge and Mets first baseman Pete Alonso. Credit: AP; Jim McIsaac
Bad, we know.
For more than a decade, since the Giants won Super Bowl XLVI, New York-area sports fans have eaten it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Other than the Yankees, who usually are good in most months other than October, the losing has been relentless.
Remember 2017? Knicks: 31-51. Nets: 20-62. Mets: 70-92. Jets: 5-11. Giants: 3-13.
That year’s Mets and Giants actually did have preseason expectations, but still, none of it compares to the unprecedented, mind-boggling, soul-crushing, relentless reality of 2023.
Rooting for bad teams is part of sports. Most eventually work their ways out of it. Being very bad when you are supposed to be very good is what really hurts.
And we have had that, in waves.
What can you say about a year in which the defending NFL Coach of the Year has seen his team implode four games into his sophomore season, making a mess of the NFL’s prime-time schedule with repeated blowout losses, and that is not even in the top three of most disappointing things to happen so far?
It’s true!
The Giants’ 1-3 start, during which they have been outscored 94-15 in three prime-time games and 64-3 in two home games, is a bummer for fans, but at least Brian Daboll’s team widely was regarded as a middling entry this season.
Not so for the Mets, Yankees and Jets, all of whom had legitimate championship aspirations and none of whom did or will achieve them.
Remember that the year began with the Nets still sporting a star-studded roster in Brooklyn. Until February, when they traded Kyrie Irving to Dallas and Kevin Durant to Phoenix, thus ending a drastically failed super-team experiment.
Even after that happened, in April the Knicks, Nets, Islanders and Rangers all reached the playoffs in the same season, a rare occasion.
Then the Islanders, Rangers and Nets lost in the first round and the Knicks in the second. Pfft.
No worries, though! It was baseball season, and the Yankees and even more so the Mets were expected to be on the short list for the World Series.
Max Scherzer! Justin Verlander! Who cares about the inherent risk of deploying elderly, highly paid professional athletes? Those guys are all-time greats!
Now both are gone, as is reigning National League Manager of the Year Buck Showalter.
OK, so the baseball season was a dud. No worries! Aaron Rodgers was a Jet, and the Giants re-signed Daniel Jones, and both teams were ready to wash the bad baseball taste out of our mouths and make it a memorable autumn.
Who cares about the inherent risk of deploying elderly, highly paid professional athletes? Rodgers is an all-time great!
He lasted four plays and remains tied on the all-time Jets pass completions list with me, you, Fireman Ed and Joe Benigno.
Even the one championship team we have had around here lately, NYCFC in 2021, currently is in eighth place in MLS.
The next good-on-paper team on the agenda is Rick Pitino’s remade St. John’s basketball squad, but it will be a while before we see how that shakes out.
So where do we go from here? To Las Vegas, where the only New York super-team to get its job done this year will begin the WNBA Finals on Sunday.
If the Liberty fall short against the Aces, yes, it’s disappointing, but at least they achieved what other New York teams have failed to do, which is to make things interesting by winning playoff series and reaching the Finals.
The rest of the country has no sympathy for us, of course. Nor should it. Our fat owner wallets and big mouths are part of our brand, and we make no apologies for that.
But our athletes have plenty to apologize for, starting with keeping us up late on these football evenings that go nowhere.
ESPN was on a negative-statistics roll on Monday night, including this doozy: The only two teams in the NFL that have not run an offensive play with a lead through four weeks are the Giants and Jets.
But at least the Jets are reasonably entertaining. Not so with the Giants.
ESPN and Elias Sports said the Giants’ minus-79 point differential in a span of three prime-time games within one season is the worst since the 1970 merger.
It has taken the Giants only four weeks to mess up “Sunday Night Football,” “Thursday Night Football” and now “Monday Night Football.”
Good night.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
