Rex just can't wake up from nightmare
New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan, right, shakes hands with New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin after an NFL football game. (Dec. 24, 2011) Credit: AP
Look at the bright side, Rex Ryan . . . and Jets fans everywhere.
Better to get all this over with in one season than to spread out the misery. Um, right?
For now, though, the past few weeks have been about as bad as it gets.
It is difficult to believe that it was only one month ago Tuesday that the Jets awoke on Christmas Eve knowing that a couple of late-season victories likely would land them in the playoffs -- and that a victory over the Giants likely would keep out their MetLife Stadium co-tenants for the third year in a row.
Instead, the positive karma that smiled upon the Jets during Ryan's first two seasons turned ugly in a hurry. It seemed as if the football gods had secured a heavily padded Rex voodoo doll and delighted in sticking pins in it.
First, the Giants won that Dec. 24 game, which turned on a 99-yard touchdown reception by Victor Cruz, a guy Ryan admitted he never had heard of even after Cruz's preseason coming-out party against the Jets two summers earlier.
Then the Jets fell to the Dolphins as receiver Santonio Holmes stewed on the bench. The incident portended the public undressing of the team's toxic chemistry problems.
Hours later, the Giants completed their playoff rally by dumping the Cowboys, whose defensive coordinator, Rob Ryan, is Rex's twin brother.
Enough? Hardly.
The Giants got the honor of playing the first playoff game in the history of MetLife, which the Jets co-own. Ryan told WFAN he drove by the stadium during the game seeking motivation for the future.
Naturally, the Giants won.
Then came Sunday. Ryan's old pals on the Ravens lost to his least favorite team, the Patriots, in the AFC title game. And the Giants upset the 49ers to join them in Super Bowl XLVI.
There is precedent for this sort of pain around here. Fans old enough to remember the 1986 World Series recall Mets vs. Red Sox widely was viewed as George Steinbrenner's worst nightmare.
Mets fans felt similarly in 2009 when the Yankees and Phillies met in October.
Now we have another Boston-New York showdown, one that has left Jets fans with nowhere to turn over the next two weeks.
Mike Stallone, 38, a Jets fan from Kings Park, said seeing the Giants back in the big game after the Jets missed by one victory the previous two seasons is like "being one number short of winning the lottery, and your neighbor wins it.''
But at least, he said, the Giants are a less dislikable team than the Pats.
Regardless, he said he and his "distraught" 9-year-old son, Louis, spent Sunday pulling for a Ravens-49ers finale. "Without a doubt,'' he said, "I was hoping it didn't come down to this.''
Jets fans had to stomach this matchup four years ago. But that was pre-Rex, back when the Giants and their fans didn't get quite the same satisfaction out of shutting up the Jets' coach.
Ryan's shtick upped the rhetorical ante, and he wasn't shy about asserting the Jets' claim to equal footing in the New York landscape.
For much of the past three years, they have earned it. But then, just as quintessential little brother Eli Manning had the best year of his career, the market's big-brother franchise reaffirmed its status.
(The Giants posted this on their Twitter feed Sunday night: Some teams are happy getting to Conference Championship games, but #ImReallyGoodAt winning them! 5-0 all time! #ALLIN.)
Ryan predicted on 1050 ESPN radio last week that the Giants and Ravens would win. Now it is clear which team he will be pulling for Feb. 5. After a month of blues, Ryan will be all in for Big Blue.
Asked if it would be more painful for him to see the Giants or Patriots win it all, he said last week, "Without question, the Patriots -- no doubt," confirming that the intra-stadium sibling rivalry is one thing, but his animosity toward the Patriots is quite another.
