NY Giants’ big win proves absurdity of NY Jets’ excuses

“This team doesn’t have enough talent, what did you expect?” — People downplaying the inexcusability of the Jets’ 0-5 start

“They’re a young team and they’ve been close, Glenn needs time to establish his culture.” — People claiming the 0-5 Jets are closer than it looks

“We had a really good week of practice, one of our better this season.” — Aaron Glenn before the Jets lost 37-22 to the Cowboys

“It’s going to take time, fellas.” — Aaron Glenn after Jets fell to 0-5

These are the excuses that the New York Jets and some of their fans continue using to justify being the league’s only winless team and having a point differential that makes Adam Gase blush.

Meanwhile, their MetLife Stadium neighbors are throwing excuses to the wayside and finding ways to inject their fan base with hope, even in a season that will likely fall short of the playoffs.

The Jets need to stop pretending it’s difficult to just be competent

Going into Thursday night, the New York Giants were 7.5-point home underdogs against the defending Super Bowl champions. They had just lost to a previously winless New Orleans Saints team and were due to face a team that was 20-2 in its last 22 games.

New York was led by a rookie quarterback, Jaxson Dart. In his third NFL start, he would be forced to work with a makeshift receiving group that had lost Malik Nabers for the season. His top wideouts in the game were Wan’Dale Robinson, Lil’Jordan Humphrey, and Jalin Hyatt.

It should also be mentioned that Dart had to work with his backup center for half of the game, and that Dart himself briefly left with a concussion.

The table was set for Giants fans to make all the excuses in the world to explain away an uncompetitive blowout loss for their rebuilding team.

Instead, the Giants flipped the script and laid a beatdown on the Philadelphia Eagles. The final score was 34-17, but the game felt even more lopsided than that, as New York knelt out the clock in the fourth quarter instead of continuing an effortless drive for another likely touchdown.

The Giants broke Philadelphia’s will, converting one third down after the next (11 for 16 on third down) while clipping the Eagles’ wings whenever it mattered most (1 for 9 on third down). At times, it looked apparent that New York flat-out wanted it more. Dart and running back Cam Skattebo made Eagles defenders miss for four quarters, while the Giants’ defensive line pounded Philadelphia’s touted offensive line.

Coaching-wise, Brian Daboll staved off the hot seat by managing circles around Nick Sirianni (outside of a baffling timeout in the second quarter to save Philadelphia from a delay of game penalty). Despite having a rookie quarterback working with fringe-level wideouts, Daboll showed no fear, taking off the play-calling training wheels and putting Dart in positions to flex his best attributes.

It worked wonders. Daboll’s calls routinely beat those of Philadelphia defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, allowing Dart to build confidence early and sustain it throughout the night.

Daboll’s aggressiveness and fearlessness in an underdog situation is the exact mentality that facilitates upsets in the parity-driven NFL. Compare that to the conservative, safe mentality utilized by another New Jersey-based team.

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It was a win of elite quality for the young Giants. Despite a gargantuan talent disadvantage on paper, they out-hustled, out-muscled, out-coached, and out-executed a team that seemed unbeatable as recently as two weeks ago.

As promising as things look for the Giants after this win, they will still likely miss the playoffs. Their injuries and roster holes will limit their consistency throughout the season, and after a 2-4 start, it will be tough for a rookie quarterback to lead the necessary hot streak to earn a wild card berth in what looks like a stacked NFC.

But the final win-loss record of the 2025 season doesn’t matter for the Giants. As they stack up performances like this one against Philadelphia and their Week 4 win over the previously undefeated Los Angeles Chargers, they continue to accomplish the one realistic goal they should strive for in a season with low expectations: making their fans proud.

It’s the very same goal that the New York Jets established for themselves. And they have come nowhere close to achieving it.

These were Aaron Glenn’s words on the final Tuesday before the 2025 season kicked off:

“What would define a successful season? I want to be a team to where the fans will look up and say, ‘We’re proud of that team.’ And if they say that, I’ll be happy. I’ll be happy, because within that, I know that wins will come.”

Sitting alone as the league’s only winless team, Jets fans have nothing to be proud of at the moment.

However, inspiring pride and hopefulness goes beyond just the Ws and Ls in the standings. It’s about the overall quality of the product.

While it’s a stretch to say fans could be “proud” of an 0-5 team, it is possible to reach 0-5 in a fashion that inspires long-term faith, but the Jets have fallen well short of that bar.

As the Giants are showing, there are ways to ignite belief within the fanbase even without a sterling win-loss record. The Giants are a 2-4 team, and they might be underdogs in every remaining game on their schedule. They are still due to pick in the top 10 when it’s all said and done.

But even if the team loses plenty of games moving forward, Giants fans can look back at performances like the one they saw last night and use them as legitimate reasons for optimism moving forward. And if they can remain competitive and inspired against some of the many formidable opponents remaining on their schedule, fans can still find pride and hope in the team’s losses.

Jets fans have not enjoyed the same luxuries.

READ MORE: NY Jets are failing at elementary school logic with this decision

Nothing about the Jets’ five-game body of work suggests there is anything for fans to be hopeful about. Their Simple Rating System (average point differential adjusted for strength of schedule) is -11.5, which suggests they would be 11.5-point underdogs on a neutral site against a perfectly average team. That mark is on pace to tie for the second-worst in franchise history, matching the infamous 2020 team that started 0-13.

Compare that to the Giants, whose SRS is all the way up to -3.2 after last night’s game (22nd in the NFL). That is a substantially more competent rating than the Jets. Big Blue is considered more than eight points stronger than Gang Green.

In fact, the Jets franchise has set its standards so low that a -3.2 SRS would be their second-best mark of the last 10 years. Their average SRS over that span is -7.0.

And therein lies the absurdity of the Jets’ excuse-making: They think it’s acceptable to be horrendous.

Losing, in certain ways, can be acceptable, as the 2-4 Giants are showing. The Jets and their most optimistic defenders try to justify the team’s 0-5 record with this logic, but what they’re overlooking is the spectrum of quality that can be found within losses. New York is losing in an utterly atrocious way, for seemingly the umpteenth consecutive year.

There are different types of losing teams in the NFL. There are those who lose games, and those who make fools of themselves while doing so. The Jets have been the latter for a long time now, and so far in 2025, nothing has changed.

The NFL is a parity-driven league; football is inherently a parity-driven sport. A weirdly shaped ball is designed to bounce in unpredictable ways, facilitating randomness.

Being this bad this consistently in a sport like football is an impressive feat. You’re supposed to occasionally luck into a fun season. Even the NFL team with the second-longest playoff drought behind the Jets’ 14 years (going on 15), the Panthers, has made four playoff appearances and a Super Bowl trip since the Jets last made it. The Giants, Browns, and Jaguars have made multiple playoff trips since the Jets were last in the dance.

Why can’t the Jets luck into a good season or two over 15 years? It’s simple: Their standard is so far below league average that even a season of great luck won’t get them close to being good enough for the playoffs.

The Jets have established a culture in which it is acceptable to consistently perform lightyears below the NFL average. While this new regime has only been around for five games of this soon-to-be 15-year drought, their excuses are spent, as the early returns are every bit as bad as their predecessors—no, worse, actually.

New York pushes through its annual woes by preaching “patience” despite the NFL showing every season that patience is usually an excuse for prolonging the inevitable. Overnight turnarounds happen with new coaches and new quarterbacks on a yearly basis.

This year’s Jets, though, weren’t realistically expected to forge an overnight turnaround. They were just expected to put themselves on the brink of a turnaround, setting the table for a leap in 2026.

Instead, they are again struggling to come close to being remotely competent, and until they do, they will not sniff the playoffs. When you are considered more than 11 points worse than the league average, you can have a lucky touchdown gifted to you every week and still lose. That’s why the Jets haven’t lucked into a single good season over the last decade.

READ MORE: NY Jets’ film shows startling lack of preparedness

The Jets’ playoff drought will continue until this level of ineptitude is rendered unacceptable. Aaron Glenn and the Jets must use the next 12 games to start playing like a competent team at the bare minimum. Their complacency about bottom-of-the-barrel play isn’t patient optimism; it’s pure delusion.

Glenn, the Jets, and their defenders argue they need “time.” To win games at a high level, sure, that’s a fair assessment. But to look like a team that deserves to be in the NFL? No time whatsoever is needed to meet that lowly bar. Last night’s Giants win shows that NFL teams should not need perfect circumstances to simply put out a competent professional football product.

You don’t need an elite veteran quarterback.

You don’t need time for your young players to learn how to win.

You don’t need perfect health.

You don’t need time to get into the groove of the season.

Just compete. If you’re an NFL team, you should be able to do it on any given Sunday (or Thursday).

Competing is all the Jets were expected to do this year. No realistic fans or prognosticators believed they would stockpile victories. The scrutiny around the team right now is not because of the 0-5 record. It’s because of the way they got there.

The Jets are as far off from league average as they have ever been over this 15-year drought. Their utter lack of competitiveness should be inexcusable in the NFL, but it’s treated as the norm in Jetsland, as if it is a minor bump in the road that will be worked through (even though they have never worked through this level of play to have success with the same regime).

Yet, teams like the Giants continue to show how easy it should be to merely be competent, further highlighting how absurd it is to excuse the Jets for their total ineptitude.

Losing is one thing. Being entirely uncompetitive is another.

Win or not, the Jets need to begin putting a better product on the field against the Denver Broncos this Sunday. Excuses about the Jets’ inexperienced roster, inexperienced coaching staff, and talent deficiencies can no longer apply. There is no reason they should not be competitive for four quarters every week, especially having already used up two more wire-to-wire home blowouts than a team should be allowed over a 17-game schedule.

But in a world where the Giants can demolish the Eagles, the Jets need to start collecting some upset wins here and there, too. In fact, they should be expected to. After starting out with a five-game body of work reminiscent of Adam Gase’s 2020 Jets team and Urban Meyer’s 2021 Jaguars team, they need some big-time performances to make up the gap separating them from competency.

It’s about time we expect the New York Jets to play like a respectable professional football organization. Fifteen years of this is enough, and while Aaron Glenn and Darren Mougey weren’t there for the first 14 years, they have yet to separate themselves from those 14 years in any meaningful way.

All they have to do to start creating that separation is to lead a competent NFL team over the next 12 games. That’s how low the bar is.

If the Giants can do it with a rookie quarterback and no Malik Nabers, there are no excuses for the Jets failing to do the same.