A worthy exercise the last time the Jets and Giants met in the regular season was trying .
Well, both teams have a long way since 2019.
The Jets and Giants will meet again for real on Oct. 29, at which point both are expected to be in the playoff picture.
I’ve seen both teams on the field during voluntary OTA practices over the past two weeks and it got us thinking: Which roster has the head-to-head advantage?
Here is our position-by-position analysis with the key players listed:
Quarterback
Jets: Aaron Rodgers, Zach Wilson
Giants: Daniel Jones, Tyrod Taylor
The skinny: By almost every statistical measure, Jones outplayed Rodgers last season. “Sell” a repeat of that head-to-head outcome. Rodgers won MVPs in 2020 and 2021, is no longer battling a broken thumb and is .
Jones can’t merely duplicate last season’s “protect the ball” definition of success. Not after . He needs to make Rodgers-esque plays downfield by extending the pocket. If disaster strikes, the Giants are in a better position to survive with one of the NFL’s best backups than the Jets are with the erratic Wilson.
Edge: Jets
Running back
Jets: Breece Hall, Michael Carter, Zonovan Knight, Israel Abanikanda
Giants: Saquon Barkley, Matt Breida, Eric Gray, Gary Brightwell
The skinny: Huge question marks on both sides. The Jets say recovering from a torn ACL, but there is no guarantee he will be in top form even if he is ready to play Week 1. For proof, look no further than Barkley, who labored through his first season after a torn ACL (2021) before regaining his dynamism last season.
Barkley has been a sounding board for Hall during his rehab. But his own future is up in the air, with an unsigned franchise tag, and no clear date when he might rejoin practice. It could be September.
Breida is the most experienced of all the backups, but Carter and Knight are bigger contributors in recent years and Abanikanda was drafted over Gray.
Edge: Giants
Wide receiver
Jets: Garrett Wilson, Allen Lazard, Mecole Hardman, Corey Davis, Randall Cobb, Denzel Mims
Giants: Darius Slayton, Isaiah Hodgins, Parris Campbell, Wan’Dale Robinson, Sterling Shepherd, Jalin Hyatt
The skinny: How deep are the Giants? If all are healthy — a big “if” because three have had major injuries in their careers — a receiver could get cut who would have been their No. 3 option in recent years. What’s missing? A true alpha such as Davante Adams, Ja’Marr Chase or … Wilson?
Yes, there is a chance Wilson elevates into that echelon in his second season. He routinely makes jaw-dropping catches during OTAs. Lazard and Cobb are former Packers who think along with Rodgers, but Rodgers can’t fall into the trap of overreliance on familiarity and underutilizing Hardman’s speed or Davis’ size. A lot of complementary skill sets, whereas .
Edge: Jets
Tight end
Jets: C.J. Uzomah, Tyler Conklin, Jeremy Ruckert
Giants: Darren Waller, Daniel Bellinger, Lawrence Cager
The skinny: , especially if the uptick in deep throws during OTAs are any indication of what is coming, because of his speed and ability to draw double teams. Again, health is a big question. Next to Waller, Bellinger looks like a blocking tight end, but his 30 catches in 12 games as a rookie suggest plenty of room for two tight-end sets.
All three Jets were newcomers last season, and Conklin surprisingly outperformed higher-paid fellow free agent Uzomah and Ruckert, the third-round pick.
Edge: Giants
Offensive line
Jets: Duane Brown, Laken Tomlinson, Connor McGovern, Alijah Vera-Tucker, Mekhi Becton, Joe Tippman, Billy Turner, Max Mitchell
Giants: Andrew Thomas, Ben Bredeson, John Michael Schmitz, Mark Glowinski, Evan Neal, Josh Ezeudu, Matt Peart, Shane Lemieux
The skinny: Are the Jets built on a house of cards? Three starters (Brown, Becton and Vera-Tucker) are not participating in OTAs while rehabbing injuries. Brown and Becton both , so one is either going to be an unhappy right tackle or a backup to a worse player.
The Giants have invested two top-10 picks, a second-round pick, a third-round pick and one of their biggest free-agent contracts of the past two seasons to get to the point of stability after a decade of debilitating lines. The All-Pro Thomas could be the NFL’s best left tackle soon, but a lot rides on the development of youngsters Neal, Schmitz and Ezeudu. A good interior pass rush will pose a problem.
Edge: Giants
Defensive line
Jets: Quinnen Williams, Quinton Jefferson, Solomon Thomas, Al Woods
Giants: Dexter Lawrence, Leonard Williams, A’Shawn Robinson, Rakeem Nunez-Roches
The skinny: Quinnen Williams, who had 12.5 sacks last season, is unhappy and . The Seahawks let both Jefferson and Woods leave town after ranking No. 26 in rushing defense (4.9 yards per carry) last season.
Do the Giants’ have the best defensive line in the NFL? Possibly. Lawrence and Williams stuff the run and rush the passer — each has had a season of at least 28 quarterback hits since 2020 — but no longer will be run down by playing 85 percent of the snaps because two free agents brought in to fix the NFL’s No. 31-ranked rushing defense (5.3 yards per carry) can share the load.
Edge: Giants
Linebacker
Jets: C.J. Mosley, Quincy Williams, Jamien Sherwood, Hamsah Nasirildeen
Giants: Bobby Okereke, Jarrad Davis, Darrian Beavers, Micah McFadden
The skinny: The Giants upgraded at linebacker more than at any other position by going from , who has 283 tackles over the past two seasons.
And yet Okereke is no Mosley — a Second-Team All-Pro for the fifth time last season — and the rest of the Giants’ depth chart offers no one as good as Williams. Davis, who was on the Lions’ practice squad late last season, is starting over McFadden in OTAs while the internally high-regarded Beavers rehabs a knee injury and awaits his NFL debut. The Jets are simply more athletic at the position.
Edge: Jets
Edge rusher
Jets: John Franklin-Myers, Carl Lawson, Jermaine Johnson, Micheal Clemons, Will McDonald, Bryce Huff
Giants: Kayvon Thibodeaux, Azeez Ojulari, Jihad Ward, Oshane Ximines
The skinny: One of the curious moves — or non-moves — of the Giants’ offseason was sticking with the same four top edge rushers after the group combined for just 14.5 sacks last season. Thibodeaux was good against the run as a rookie, but he was drafted to harass quarterbacks. The injury-prone Ojulari has 13.5 sacks in 24 career games.
You know a roster is deep when . The Jets are built to use two waves of defensive linemen and capitalize on fresh fourth-quarter legs. With young talent behind them, Franklin-Myers and Lawson are under pressure to produce in 2023 to keep their jobs.
Edge: Jets
Cornerback
Jets: Sauce Gardner, D.J. Reed, Brandin Echols, Michael Carter II
Giants: Adoree’ Jackson, Deonte Banks, Cor’dale Flott, Darnay Holmes, Aaron Robinson
The skinny: There aren’t many NFL duos better than Gardner — the reigning Defensive Rookie of the Year — and Reed. The Jets drafted five defensive backs in their 2021 class, but Echols — — and Carter are the last two playing in the Jets’ secondary after position changes and cuts.
Jackson doesn’t get enough credit as a viable No. 1 cornerback. First-round pick Deonte Banks , and the other three youngsters will compete in the slot to see who separates from the pack.
Edge: Jets
Safety
Jets: Jordan Whitehead, Chuck Clark, Tony Adams, Ashytn Davis
Giants: Xavier McKinney, Bobby McCain, Nick McCloud, Jason Pinnock, Dane Belton
The skinny: McKinney played like a star in the one of three seasons that he stayed healthy. The final year of his contract would be a wise time to duplicate his 2021 performance (five interceptions). It’s an open competition to see who starts next to him, possibly led by a Jets cut (Pinnock). Julian Love .
Whitehead and Clark (when he was the Ravens) tied as the No. 46th-ranked safety — ahead of McKinney — in the NFL last season, per Pro Football Focus’ grades. Trading a seventh-round pick might end up being another one of general manager Joe Douglas’ shrewd deals. Depth is a concern.
Edge: Jets
Coaching staff
Jets: Robert Saleh, Nathaniel Hackett, Jeff Ulbrich, Brant Boyer
Giants: Brian Daboll, Mike Kafka, Wink Martindale, Thomas McGaughey
The skinny: No team made more with less than last season’s Giants, which earned Daboll a NFL Coach of the Year award and earned Kafka and Martindale interviews to become head coaches.
Saleh enters the season with unspoken playoffs-or-bust pressure. The Rodgers-endorsed Hackett failed miserably as Broncos head coach, and wasn’t calling plays in his previous stint as Packers offensive coordinator. Ulbrich’s defense starred last season, but a deep dive shows they had .
Edge: Giants
Total edges: Jets 6, Giants 5
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How the Heat saved their season — and maybe much more
Trailing by eight points at the start of the fourth quarter in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Heat impersonated the dynasty-era Warriors and made five 3s in the period and 17 on 35 attempts overall Sunday to .
By comparison, the Heat shot 13-of-39 from 3 in a Game 1 loss.
“Max Strus … got 10 3s off, Gabe Vincent gets six off, Kevin Love gets six off, Duncan Robinson gets three off — and those are guys we’re supposed to have a heightened awareness to,” Denver coach Michael Malone said. “As I mentioned after Game 1, the fact that they got 16 wide-open 3s was concerning. They didn’t make them. We got lucky in Game 1. Tonight, they made them. It was definitely a breakdown in communication, definitely a breakdown in our game plan.”
The Heat scored 36 points and shot 69 percent from the floor in the fourth, .
“That’s two games where our fourth-quarter defense has been non-existent,” Malone said.
The Heat, who are the NBA’s best 3-point shooting team in the playoffs (39.2 percent), shot 36 percent from 3 at home in the regular season. If they keep getting open 3s with friendly rims when the series shifts to Miami for Game 3, the Nuggets could live to regret the fourth-quarter turning point in Game 2 for years to come.
Mr. Not Right
There were more “boos” at Citi Field this weekend than at Great Adventure’s Fright Fest during Halloween.
, who went 1-for-12 with a single and eight strikeouts during .
What’s more alarming beyond one bad series, however, is the switch-hitting Lindor’s season-long struggles from the left-handed batter’s box.
Lindor is now hitting .199 against right-handed pitchers. For his career, Lindor is a .268 hitter in those matchups.
“There’s always something every year that’s a break from the norm,” manager Buck Showalter said. “Everybody, rightfully so, looks at it — like we do. Something that somebody struggled against all of a sudden is a strength the next year. It’s part of the game.
“But it’s our job — his and ours — to try to figure it out and get it back to what he is used to doing. That hasn’t been the case. We need to figure that out — he and us.”
The Blue Jays pulled left-hander Yusei Kikuchi for right-hander Nate Pearson when Lindor was leading off the bottom of the sixth inning of Sunday’s 6-4 loss. He struck out.
Lindor’s struggles at the plate also seemed to affect his hustle in the series finale: He didn’t chase the ball after catcher Francisco Alvarez’s throwing error that allowed a run to score from second base, and he didn’t sprint out of the batter’s box and maybe lost an extra-base hit when his third-inning looping single fell in front of the center fielder.
“As a professional athlete, there is nothing I can do but put my head down and work,” Lindor said after Saturday’s 0-fer. “I was talking to one of my teammates, and I said, ‘Last year, I went through it, and it hurt. This year, I’m going through it, and it hurts. I’ll probably go through it late in the year again, and it will hurt the same amount.’”
Forced Gleyber
The three most frequently asked questions in New York might be: Where can I find parking? Why do bagels taste better here than everywhere else? What can the Yankees get in return for trading Gleyber Torres?
The answers, respectively, should be: You can’t. The water. Stop asking.
Trading Torres is the topic that won’t die. It comes up annually around the MLB trade deadline, and it resurfaces every offseason. It feels inevitable.
Oswald Peraza’s scorching streak at Triple-A — he’s hitting .342 with 10 home runs and a 1.195 OPS in 17 games since he was sent down by the Yankees — has renewed the idea of trading Torres earlier on the summer calendar than normal.
Armchair general managers want to turn the page to a middle-infield combination of Peraza and Anthony Volpe — ignoring the rookie Volpe’s prolonged slump, despite Sunday’s ninth-inning homer — and add a starting pitcher in exchange for Torres.
Even putting aside Brian Cashman’s ghastly record of trading for starting pitchers, shipping out Torres still reeks of “be careful what you wish for.”
Torres has an overall .333 on-base percentage and nearly as many walks (26) as strikeouts (32), bringing some stability when hitting atop the lineup (.327 on-base percentage) as he was for a 22nd start in . His sloppy shortstop defense of yesteryear has been replaced by reliable play at second base, where he is only -2 in Fielding Bible’s defensive runs saved metric.
Because it is Torres’ sixth season, it’s easy to forget he is only 26 years old and still ascending into his prime.
Josh Donaldson will be gone next season. DJ LeMahieu is quickly fading as an every-day infielder.
Trading Torres, who has one more year of salary arbitration, opens a two-way hole that could be hard to fill even if Volpe and Peraza both turn into viable starters — no sure thing, of course.
