Why the Jets' most important game of the season won't include them as a participant
Jets coach Aaron Glenn looks on in the first quarter of a game against the Saints at Caesars Superdome on Dec. 21, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Credit: Getty Images/Chris Graythen
FLORHAM PARK, N.J.
The most important game of the Jets’ season will be played on Sunday, but they’ll be watching it instead of playing in it.
The contest between the Giants and Raiders that almost certainly will decide who receives the initial rights to the first overall pick in April’s draft will kick off right around the time the Jets leave the field from their matchup against New England. So just as they are leaving MetLife Stadium — whether they upset the Patriots or drop another game to them — they’ll be checking their phones for updates from Vegas to see how lucky they can get.
The Jets, of course, would prefer for the Giants to lose. That’s usually the undercurrent considering the sibling rivalry they have partaken in for the past half-century, but this time they really want them to fail.
The reason? It all comes down to the quarterback hunting that will take place in the coming months.
The Giants have one — or at least most people think they do — in Jaxson Dart. That means if they hold the top pick in the draft, it could very well be for sale to the highest-bidding team that wants to jump up and select a quarterback.
The Jets, given their vacuum at the position and all of the draft capital they acquired in the trading of Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams earlier this season, certainly would be among those presenting packages to the Giants.
But the Raiders need a quarterback, too. If they wind up with that No. 1 pick, it’s very difficult to see them trading it away. They’d more likely use it to select the top passing prospect in the class — whoever they deem that to be — leaving the Jets with either the second or third choice.
The Jets have been in that situation a few times in recent years and it hasn’t worked out for them.
In 2018, they traded up to third overall weeks before the draft and wound up selecting Sam Darnold after Baker Mayfield went first overall to the Browns (the Giants took Saquon Barkley second overall). In 2021, they ditched Darnold — the wisdom of which is very much called into question; he has led two other teams to the playoffs since leaving the Jets — and used the second overall pick to select Zach Wilson after Trevor Lawrence was taken first by the Jaguars.
The clear lesson? It’s much better to have dibs on the top quarterback than it is to wait around and collect the leftovers.
Jets coach Aaron Glenn stiff-armed the idea that he might be doing some scoreboard-watching on Sunday because of all these machinations.
“Those things handle themselves,” he said on Friday. “There are so many different scenarios that go on with that, as a coach, why waste your time thinking about things like that?”
That’s fair. Coaches shouldn’t think about it. Certainly not leading up to or during their own game. Glenn said he just wants to beat the Patriots. That’s the right approach.
But owners, general managers, scouts and fans — especially fans — will be quite invested in what happens in Vegas on Sunday. And once the New England game is over, Glenn and next year’s returning players should be, too. Their future is in the process of being decided.
There still is a mathematical path for the Jets to “earn” the top pick themselves. According to ESPN and their Football Power Index, which projects the draft order by simulating the remaining two weeks of the season 10,000 times, the three-win Jets have a 2.5% shot at it. The Browns (24.2%) and Cardinals (less than 0.1%) — two more teams looking for quarterbacks — still have a chance, too. But the Giants have the best odds (36.9%) followed closely by the Raiders (36.4%). Sunday’s game between those two two-win teams will tilt those chances massively toward the loser.
The loser, in other words, will be the winner.
And as we said, the Jets should be pulling for it to be the Giants.
If the Giants do get the top pick, the Jets still won’t have an open path to it. They’d have to pay a steep price for the chance to move up, and depending on where their own original pick stands, the cost will be high.
The one thing the Jets shouldn’t worry too much about is the Giants balking at doing business with the Jets because of their rivalry. It’s hard to imagine the Giants completely shutting the door on a deal with the Jets just because they play in the same stadium. Then again, the Giants definitely would be exposing themselves to a decade or more of second-guessing if they traded the top pick to the Jets and they somehow hit on a championship-caliber quarterback while the Giants’ struggles continued.
But the Giants seem convicted in their belief in Dart, especially once he gets Malik Nabers working with him for more than the one half of a game they played together this season. And they would be better served by addressing their many other needs with the haul of picks they would get from the Jets or anyone else who trades up with them.
Might there be a hometown markup? Potentially. But everyone knows New Jersey has some of the highest taxes in the country. Consider this part of that.
First, though, the Giants have to get the pick that everyone wants. It won’t be easy, especially given that the Raiders are in a much better position to actually tank.
Unlike the Giants, they do not have a young quarterback whose long-term confidence and development could be aided by a victory. Unlike the Giants, they do not have a head coach, interim though he may be, who has yet to win a game. And unlike the Giants, they do not have an owner who just a year ago said of the possibility of orchestrating on-field losses: “We are never going to do that in this organization as long as I’m standing on this side of the grass.”
That was John Mara’s statement in January.
The Giants also have the benefit of knowing that while the first overall pick likely would give them a chance to flip it for more picks, their miserable season already has secured them one of the top three or four selections no matter what happens. And with most of the others jostling for that top spot in need of a quarterback, the Giants still can trade their eventual pick or even use it on the best available non-quarterback in the draft.
A Giants win on Sunday will impact their draft plans, but it will be much more devastating to the Jets’ than their own.
So here we are with a bit of a twist on a scenario that played out in the final weekend of the season in 1981, an event Newsday recounted just last weekend. Back then, the Giants beat the Cowboys in overtime on the last Saturday of the season but still needed the Jets to beat the Packers on Sunday to get into the playoffs. The Jets — who also needed to beat the Packers to get in — obliged, and both teams advanced to the postseason. Everyone was happy.
Forty-four years later, the Giants have a chance to pay back the debt they owe to those Jets.
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.
