First families of NY football finally own the town
New York Giants owner John Mara arrives for the NFL football owners meeting Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022, in New York. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
Some rare sights were on display at the NFL’s fall meeting in Manhattan on Tuesday.
Owners of New York’s football teams were there and . . . smiling.
Why not? The Giants and Jets are a combined 9-3 this season, each riding three-game winning streaks, each building on newly installed cultures and overhauled rosters, each getting a long-awaited taste of the success that has eluded them for the better part of the past decade.
“It’s great,” Jets owner Woody Johnson said of the euphoria that surrounds both teams. “It’s great news. Great news for the city, great news for the country. New York has to win. We’re kind of the center of everything, right? I mean as a New Yorker we are the center of everything.”
That hasn’t always the case in football. Fashion, media, a case could even be made for baseball. But football? When this season began two teams were tied for the worst cumulative record over the previous five seasons. The Giants and the Jets.
Now here they are climbing toward the top of the league. And because it is New York, the top of the world, too.
They paraded through the lobby of the downtown hotel with grins indicative of that newfound status, their terse words belying their demeanors.
Asked what he thought about the Giants’ season, co-owner Steve Tisch said: “Great.”
Same question to Jets vice chairman Christopher Johnson and brother of Woody: “I’m just really happy about it.”
Giants co-owner John Mara has been around long enough to know there is still a long way to go before his team’s 5-1 record translates to success in December, January or beyond, which may be why he gave the most measured response.
Either that or Brian Daboll’s focus on the daily grind and reluctance to look back or forward has gotten to him.
“So far so good,” he said. “We’re on to Jacksonville.”
Woody Johnson, on the other hand, could not contain his glee. He was still gushing about Sunday’s win over the Packers.
“The win over Green Bay was pretty cool,” he said. “To go into the sacred Lambeau Field. Pretty great.”
He also said he is not surprised Robert Saleh has turned the Jets around, though he is impressed it has happened so quickly.
“It takes a while to change a culture,” he said. “I was surprised that it kind of came in this fast. But the young guys are doing the job, the vets are doing a great job. Duane Brown, look what he did running down and blocking for [Braxton] Berrios. That’s a big guy. And way down there blocking. He’s got heart.”
The Jets could wind up with both the offensive and defensive rookies of the year this season if Sauce Gardner and Breece Hall keep performing like they have been.
“Maybe,” Johnson said. “But we’re only into it a few games so we’ll see what happens, as [Bill] Parcells used to say. But so far so good.”
He said the Jets first have to focus on the “daunting” challenge of playing the Broncos. Not so much the team that is struggling.
“It’s always tough at 6,000 feet,” he said.
Unless you are a Johnson or Mara or Tisch, of course. Up that high is where the clouds are, and lately they’re being trod on by the owners of New York football.
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.
