With the National Football League season just two weeks away, focus in the New York metropolitan area is focused on the performance of new superstar quarterback Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets, a team with Super Bowl expectations. The Jets have been featured on Hard Knocks throughout training camp and also produce their own internal behind-the-scenes series, One Jets Drive. In fact, the award-winning content from the 1JD production team has rendered WFAN anchor Jerry Recco over Hard Knocks with just two episodes to go.
“This is not a knock on Hard Knocks, because I’ve enjoyed it, as much as I think the Jets production is that good,” Recco said Tuesday morning on WFAN.
Across the NFL landscape, the Jets have been at the center of attention and seem to be facing added levels of pressure not placed on the franchise for quite some time. Rodgers and “Gang Green” will seek to snap a 12-year playoff drought and win the organization’s first Super Bowl championship in 54 years, but the path to get there will not be easy. The Jets face several established contenders in the AFC throughout the first few weeks of the season, garnering nationally-televised contests.
As Recco was finishing the latest episode of One Jets Drive, he began to think about how the sports conversation in the area is centered on the Jets. The perspective engendered his consideration of the other NFL team in the area – the New York Giants – and how the organization must feel during this offseason.
“If I’m a Giants fan, I’m ticked,” Recco said. “My team last year not only made the playoffs, [but] they won a playoff game [and] they signed the quarterback. They got the running back back; year two of Brian Daboll, and all I hear is, ‘Jets, Jets, Jets, Jets!,’ and I understand why, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not ticked off.”
Being a member of The NFL Today on CBS Sports in addition to his local radio hosting role on WFAN in New York, N.Y., Boomer Esiason knows that the Jets are dominating the discussion. There is a level of intrigue that has not surrounded the franchise in previous seasons, diverting attention from many other organizations with viable chances to compete for a championship.
“Aaron Rodgers sucked the entire life out of the entire NFL by coming to the New York Jets,” Esiason expressed. “It is by far and away the biggest story in the league this year.”
Esiason surmises that the Giants are not annoyed, but rather content that the Jets have the spotlight on them. Even so, Recco feels that people should start recognizing “Big Blue,” a team that overachieved in the eyes of many pundits by winning a road playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings.
“We are now approaching the season and I feel like it’s time that the Giants get their due from what they did last year,” Recco said. “Now I’m on the record – I think they’re going to be a good team this year. I think they’re going to miss the playoffs because I think the first half of their season schedule-wise is going to cripple them.”
