Anytime both New York teams are good at the same time, whether it’s the Yankees and Mets, or the Rangers and Islanders, everyone likes to toss out the Subway Series idea. It’s not enough for us to demand championships; we have to demand that the runners-up can take a cab ride to see the trophy. But the “Subway Series” is an ideal that’s always more exciting in theory than it is in practice: Other than the Roger Clemens bat-throwing incident, the 2000 World Series was a bit of a dud. Let’s try to keep our enthusiasm in check here, but right now it looks like the two best teams in the NFL play in the same building. Are you prepared for a Jets-Giants Super Bowl?
First, the Jets. What was most shocking about their 34–13 shellacking of the previously undefeated Tennessee Titans — in Nashville — was that it wasn’t as close as the score indicated. The Jets dominated from the first play. Remember, the Titans were undefeated coming in, and they were hammered at home. Oh, and you can shelve those theories about Brett Favre being mentally stuck in Green Bay; he’s clicking with Jets receivers as well as he ever did with Antonio Freeman and Donald Driver in Wisconsin. With the win in New England two Thursdays ago, Favre and the Jets banished the memory of their awkward shotgun marriage. This is his team, and they’re responding to him in a way that most of his later Packers teams never did. The Jets have five winnable games to end the season. If they play like they have the last two weeks, they’ll win them all … and might just end up with home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs.
Which is going to cause some scheduling headaches in the Meadowlands, because the Giants pretty much clinched their own home-field advantage in the NFC. The upstart Arizona Cardinals, one of the only legitimate challengers to the Giants’ supremacy, were no match. The Giants are now 10–1, two games ahead of their closest competitors. They have no legitimate challengers in the conference and, now that the Titans have lost, are universally considered the best team in the NFL.
So let it begin: A Super Bowl Subway Series — if subways went to East Rutherford, anyway — is more likely now that it has possibly ever been. Imagine what would happen if both the AFC and NFC Championship games were held on the same Sunday at the same stadium in New Jersey? That’ll be a busy Meadowlands grounds crew. And the Jets and Giants could play for the right to face each other … in Tampa.
