Hey! Cool! The Jets and the Giants BOTH won this week.

That doesn’t happen very often.

Sometimes life IS magical and full of joy.

The Jets flew to London to play the Miami Dolphins. The Hapless Dolphins, as it turned out. The final score was 27-14, but the game was not nearly as close as that would suggest. The Jets pretty much dominated from start to finish, even with the refs doing all they could to help the Fins. (That first Miami touchdown was a gift, coming after a ‘drive’ that consisted of two phantom pass interference calls that took Miami almost the length of the field).

Miami was supposed to be good this year with the addition of Ndomukong Suh — some pundits were even picking them to topple the Pats in the AFC East — but it appears that was mirage. Suh was a fearsome run-stuffer in Detroit, but in Miami he has been a total non-factor. Yesterday the Jets ran all over the Fins; inside, outside, up, down, and through. Chris Ivory is a good running back, yes, but he had a career day yesterday, and looked like the second coming of Jim Brown. And who knew that Ryan Fitzpatrick could run? (Hint: I don’t think he can. Except against Miami).

Gang Green is now 3-1. I don’t think they are as good as they looked yesterday, but they may just be good enough to mount a playoff run. We’ll know for sure when they face Brady and the Pats and Evil Little Bill. Meanwhile, the Dolphins just fired Joe Philbin, their head coach. After what they showed in Wembley, that’s no big surprise.

Back home in the US, the Giants went up to Buffalo and beat Rex Ryan 24-10 in a game that all the talking heads picked the Bills to win. The G-Men appear to be better than most of the pundits predicted going into the season, and the Bills worse. Buffalo did a lot to beat themselves yesterday with 17 penalties… including a number of unsportsmanlike conduct and unnecessary roughness calls that speak to a startling lack of discipline.

As dominant as the Jets looked in London, the Giants looked ever MORE dominant in Buffalo… for the first two and a half quarters. Eli and the offense were passing and running up and down the field, and the D would not even allow the Bills a single first down. But, as happens all too often with the G-Men, all those yards did not necessarily translate into points, and when Buffalo finally started to come to life midway through the third period and into the fourth, I started having nightmares of another game slipping away. The Giants, after all, had blown double-digit fourth quarter leads to Dallas and Atlanta in the first two games of the season. For a while, it looked as if that might happen again. All the momentum had shifted.

One play changed all that. On third and three, Eli made a short toss to RB Rashad Jennings in the flat, and Jennings escaped what looked like a sure tackle for a loss and took the ball all the way down the field for a TD, blasting through two more Bills en route. A great run by Jennings, poor tackling by the Bills, and it should have iced the game.

But, you know, it didn’t. The Giants still made it way harder than it should have been. Later that quarter, with less than four minutes left, a series of flagrant fouls by the Bills had the G-Men all the down inside the ten, first and goal. They were up 24-10 by that point. A field goal would have given them a three-score lead. All they needed to do was run the ball, run the ball, run the ball… either blast in for a TD, or, if stuffed, kick the FG to go up 27-10. Buffalo would have burned its time outs. Game over.

But no. Instead Ben McAdoo decides to get cute. No runs to burn the clock. Instead Eli attempts a pass to Odell Beckham Jr that went incomplete, then fires a pass to Reuben Randel that gets intercepted. No time run off the clock, no Buffalo timeouts burned. Hey, let’s give the Bills another chance, why don’t we?

It was Eli’s first INT of the season… but why the HELL was he throwing in that situation? No good reason. A FG is just as good as a TD in that situation. The playcalls were as inexplicable as those at the end of the Dallas game. Fortunately, this time it did not come back to bite the Giants in the ass.

With Dallas losing, the Giants, Cowboys, and Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Peoples are all 2-2, and the NFC East is up for grabs. Here’s hoping the Giants grab it.

Life is meaningless and full of pain.

The Jets have never beaten the Philadelphia Eagles. Never.

A record they kept intact today.

That 2-0 record was exciting, and I still think Gang Green will have a good season, maybe even make the playoffs. But this morning was a tough one. Especially the way it ended, on a stupid penalty just when the Jets were about the get the ball back. It still would have been very unlikely that they could have tied the score, but I would at least liked to have seen them get to try the Hail Mary.

sigh

The penalty that ended things wasn’t even the worst play of the game. That distinction goes to the “lateral” that Brandon Marshall tried after catching a first down pass.

Too many turnovers. I will give to the Jets for the way they fought back in the second half. For a little while I thought they might pull off a miracle comeback. The first half, though… the D played tough throughout, but the O was horrible for the whole first half. Three and out, three and out, three and out, three and out. The running game was going nowhere, and while Fitz was completing a lot of passes, they were all to receivers behind the line of scrimmage, who would then immediately be tackled for no game. VERY conservative play-calling. In the second half, the Jets finally began to throw down the field, which led to some INTs but also a TD and some first downs. I know the deep ball is not Fitz’s strong point, but even so, throwing for a loss gets you nowhere.

Next up for the Jets: the Dolphins, in London. That one should tell us whether Gang Green is for real or not.

The Giants won their first game of the season last night.

About time, I say. At this point they should actually be 3-0, since they went into the fourth quarter of the Dallas and Atlanta game with double-digit leads, only to blow both contests. Last night, thankfully, they hung on and won convincingly.

But I am not reading that much into this. It was a win, yes, but a home win over Washington, and the G-Men have owned the Redskins in recent years. Eli looked good last night, and Odell Beckham Junior continues to look great. Reuben Randal came up big as well, thank ghod. But I still have questions about the defense. In the fourth quarter, they had not one but two chances to end the game by stopping Washington on fourth-and-long, but gave up first downs both times. And the pass rush is just not there. Will JPP ever return? If he does, will he be the player he was, minus a finger and half his thumb? Who knows? But boy, the G-Men need him.

Victor Cruz will return next week, they say. That will be great, and should lift the offense to the next level. But how Spags gets the D to the next level, I don’t know.

Even at 1-2, the opportunity is there for the Giants, with the Eagles reeling and the Cowboys suffering devastating injuries to Dez and Romo. Whether they will be good enough to take advantage of the chance remains to be seen. There are sterner tests a-coming.

The NFL is back. Was I ready for some football?

Ah… er… not really. The season somehow snuck up on me. Too busy, I guess. I only managed to watch one preseason game, hardly paid any attention at all, and suddenly the first game was upon us.

The Jets were pretty impressive, thumping the Cleveland Browns and Johnny Football.

The Giants… oh, ghod, what can I say? That loss to the hated Cowboys was excruciating. I can’t deny that Tony Romo was brilliant on that final game-winning drive, especially in the absence of Dez Bryant… but Dallas did not win the game. It was given to them. First by the ref, who made an absolutely bogus pass interference call that resulted in a Cowboy touchdown. And then by Eli Manning, who lost track of the Dallas timeouts and actually told Rashad Jennings not to score when the G-Men had the ball on the Dallas one, first and goal, with under two minutes left.

One timeout, two timeouts, does it matter? Jennings gets that ball in, the game is over. A TD there makes it a 10-point game, and the Cowboys would not have had time enough to score twice.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Overall, the Giants D and the Jets O both looked better than anticipated.

I do wonder if the G-Men can bounce back from a gut-wrenching loss like that. One that they inflicted on themselves.

It’s draft weekend for the National Football League, so of course I have been glued to my television set. This year, for the first time in decades, they are holding the draft in Chicago instead of NYC, and it looks as though the whole city has gone crazy. Nothing can compare with the pulse-pounding excitement of a name being read out every ten minutes (five in later rounds).

Anyway, looks to me as if the Jets and Giants are both doing very well this year.

The Jets probably better. DT Leonard Williams, supposedly “the best player in the draft,” fell all the way to Gang Green at pick #6, which should give us the best D-line in the NFL. And in the fourth round, the Jets finally found our Quarterback of the Future in Bryce Petty (who may well become the Quarterback of the Present if Geno Smith does not start playing better real soon).

But I liked the Giants’ picks too. They picked up a promising pass rusher whose name I will never be able to pronounce, and made an aggressive trade to go up and get one of the top safeties in the draft… a definite need, given how many big plays the secondary gave up last year.

Round six is now in progress, and seven coming up. With luck, both of my teams will find a few diamonds in the rough with those late picks.

After two years in exile, the best cornerback in the NFL is finally returning to the New York Jets.

It has been a long long time since fans of Gang Green had anything to celebrate, but the return of Darrelle Revis is definitely cause for a smile.

Of course, he should never have left. See my Not A Blog post of April 21, 2013. I said it all then: trading away the Jets best cause was sufficient cause for dumping our then-new GM, John Idzik. Time has proved me right. Now Idzik is gone and Darelle is back. It only cost us two years, two lost seasons, and a great coach, Rex Ryan.

Will Darrelle's return make the Jets a contender?

Well, one can dream… but I think it unlikely, unless it turns out Revis can also play quarterback. So long as we have Geno Smith and the Pats have Tom Brady, I can't see the Jets contending for the AFC East.

Elsewhere in the NFL… well, the Giants are looking better and better as well. Not because of anything they have done, but because of what's happening down in Philadelphia, where Chip Kelly seems to be systemically dismantling the Eagles. Hey, keep at it, Chip.

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Go Seahawks!!

Deflate the Pats!

LATER: life is meaningless and full of pain.

And that was beyond a doubt the worst play call in the history of the superbowl.

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