Lawrence Taylor had his golf clubs on his cart and was about to take the driver out of his bag on the first hole Monday when he took a full swing at the Jets and smacked them right down the middle of the fairway.
In the Battle of New York, LT says this is a Giants town.
“The Giants pretty much own New York. We’ve done more,” LT told the Daily News by cell phone from the golf course. “We’ve got better fans and more fans than the Jets do. We’ve got four Super Bowls behind us. Until they win some Super Bowls, the conversation is over with. Like I said, the conversation is over with.”
You either line up blue or green with no in between and the best football player who has ever played in New York is obviously true blue. “The Jets are playing the Giants,” LT said. “Is there really any doubt who is the better team?”
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The Giants and Jets meet Sunday at MetLife Stadium in what is basically a playoff elimination game. The Giants have been out of the playoffs since 2011, the Jets since 2010. The Giants are tied with Washington for first place in the NFC East at 5-6. The Jets are tied with the Steelers, Chiefs and Texans for the two wild-card spots at 6-5.
If the season ended today, the Giants and Jets would both miss the playoffs on tiebreakers. So, it’s a good thing the season isn’t ending today.
The Giants and Jets play every four years and Sunday’s game is a Giants home game. “At the end of the day, if you can play on a New York team, you really don’t lose anything by playing for the Jets or playing for the Giants,” Taylor said. “The city loves both teams. I prefer the Giants because I am a Giant. Both teams are pretty solid.”
New York has always been owned by the Giants with the Jets leasing it for a few years.
Why? The Giants have been in the NFL since 1925. The Jets, as the Titans, are an AFL original from 1960. The Giants have been to five Super Bowls and won four Lombardi trophies. They didn’t win their first until Super Bowl XXI but their four titles in the last 28 years tie them with the Patriots for the most in the NFL during that time. The Jets won their one and only title in Super Bowl III on Jan. 12, 1969 – a mere 17,124 days ago – in the greatest upset in pro football history.
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“I think until you win it all, I don’t want to say you play second fiddle, but it’s more of a Giants town than it has been a Jets town because it’s 47 years since the New York Jets can say they were world champions,” said Marty Lyons, an excellent defensive tackle for the Jets from 1979-89 and now the analyst on their radio broadcasts. “Any time you play the Giants, it’s a challenge game. People say it’s for bragging rights. Maybe it’s for bragging rights for one day, but what really matters is if you’re in the playoffs or watching the playoffs at home.”
I reminded LT of his comment more than 20 years ago about Jets season ticket holders being Giants fans who were unable to get tickets. “I do remember saying that, yeah,” he said with a big laugh Monday. “But I might have been drinking that day.”
When the Jets moved into Giants Stadium in 1984, the Jets really felt like second-class citizens. “It was not really a rivalry because the Jets were not in our division,” Taylor said. “But playing in the same stadium, you always want to be king of the stadium. I remember in my younger days, it didn’t make any difference what you did during the season. You just got to be the best team in the city.”
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The Giants and Jets have made the playoffs in the same season just five times: 1981, 1985, 1986, 2002 and 2006. Incredibly, the 1986 season is the only year the Giants and Jets each won a playoff game.
The Jets have owned New York twice and each time it was only briefly:
-Even after the Jets’ Super Bowl III victory over the Colts, it took their 37-14 victory over the Giants in the first-ever preseason game between the teams that summer at the Yale Bowl to win over all of New York. The Giants were just 7-7 in the Jets’ Super Bowl season and in the middle of a stretch of not making the playoffs from 1964-80, but it wasn’t until the Jets beat Big Blue that Giants fans begrudgingly conceded Joe Namath and friends owned the city. The Jets led 24-0 after the first 17 minutes. “It was a bigger game than the Super Bowl to us,” Jets receiver Don Maynard told me before the last time the Jets and Giants met in 2011.
The Jets were world champions, but they weren’t considered champions of New York until they beat a mediocre Giants team. “Back in ’69, we had won the championship, but we knew we still had to beat the Giants because the Giants fans did not accept our (Super Bowl) win as a win against them,” Namath said. “They thought if they had their team in there instead of the Colts, they would have won.”
The Jets have made it to four conference championships game since the Super Bowl victory, but have lost all four.
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-The Jets went on phenomenal and unexpected runs to the AFC title game in 2009 and 2010. The Giants missed the playoffs each time. Rex Ryan declared the Jets the “big brother” in his book “Play Like You Mean It,” which came out in the spring of 2011: “When people ask me what it’s like to share New York with the Giants, my response is always I am not sharing it with them – they are sharing it with me…We came to New York City to be the best team in the NFL, not just the best team in New York City. And I have news for you: We are the better team. We’re the big brother…It seems clear right now we are the better team and we are going to remain the better team for the next 10 years.”
Seven months after the book came out, the Giants beat the Jets in a crucial Christmas Eve game highlighted by Victor Cruz’s 99-yard TD catch. A few weeks later, Ryan’s “little brother” won their fourth Super Bowl. And it’s been the Same Old Jets ever since.
