To understand how things can actually go from bad to worse for the Giants and Jets over the last two games of the season, as crazy as that sounds, it’s necessary to revisit the 2018 NFL draft one last time. Of course that is when the Giants took Saquon Barkley with the No. 2 overall pick, and the Jets took Sam Darnold at No. 3, to great fanfare for both. Neither one of them plays here any longer, maybe you’ve heard.
You better believe Barkley is with the Eagles now, and could have a chance — wait for it — against the Giants on the last Sunday of the regular season to break the all-time single season rushing record held, and for a long time, by the great Eric Dickerson.
And to make the moment even a little more painful for local football fans, if such a thing is even possible at this point, Barkley that day will be running behind Mekhi Becton, whom the Jets took with the 11th pick of the 2020 draft, a player who has become one of the better right guards in the league for the Eagles this season.
And Darnold? He’s not going to win the MVP award this season, because Josh Allen ought to. If Allen somehow doesn’t, Lamar Jackson probably will win another one. But Allen’s team is 12-3 right now. Jackson’s team is 11-5. Darnold’s Vikings are 13-2 and still have their chance to finish with the best record in the NFC. When you look at that Vikings record and what they’ve done, it’s fair to ask how anybody has been more valuable to his team this season than Darnold — who only got his chance because rookie J.J. McCarthy got hurt — has been to the Vikings? That means whether he’s still with the Vikings next season or not, and no matter what happens against the Packers on Sunday.
It is why you can make the case, and fairly easily, that there aren’t two better stories in the whole league this season than the Barkley and Darnold. No. 2 and No. 3 from that ’18 draft. Both of them having become the stars the men who drafted them thought they could become.
Just somewhere other than here.
So one of the dreariest and dismal football seasons we have ever had in New York does get even more painful before the Giants and Jets are asked to stop playing football games. Because you can absolutely make the case that not only are Barkley and Darnold two of the very best stories in the league this season, but that they are two of the four most valuable players in the sport. Barkley of the Eagles. Darnold of the Vikings. Theirs, not ours.
By the way? You know who was the first overall pick in that ‘18 draft? Baker Mayfield. He’s somebody else who had to leave his original team — in his case the Browns, the Midwest version of the Giants and Jets — and make some other stops before finding his way to Tampa Bay.
Barkley had some times here, he did, before and after he hurt his knee. Dave Gettleman is the one who took a running back at No. 2, and talked at the time about being able to see Barkley wearing one of those gold sports jackets they give out in Canton to Hall of Fame players, though a lot of us gave him plenty of heat about that. A season like the one Barkley has had with the Eagles doesn’t mean that’s still going to happen for him, even if he is blessed with good health the rest of his career. But he has looked every inch a Hall of Fame talent in Philadelphia and, if Jalen Hurts hadn’t suffered a concussion last weekend, Barkley would be the biggest reason the Eagles might still be in play for best record in the conference.
He has been that great, and has occasionally looked that dominant. Just for the NFC East team less than a couple of hours from MetLife Stadium, at Lincoln Financial Field.
“I’ll have a tough time sleeping if Saquon goes to Philadelphia,” John Mara said, and famously on “Hard Knocks.”
Now there is a good chance that Mara’s nightmare about Barkley can play all the way out, in Philadelphia, with Mara perhaps having the chance, in person, to see Barkley break Dickerson’s record. You keep wondering what the bottom is for the 2024-25 Giants. Maybe that finally is: The possibility of Barkley doing it and doing it against the Giants. No one is quite sure what the Giants have done to have the football gods turn on them this way. But they sure must have done something.
And then there is Darnold sticking it to the Jets this way. Sam Darnold: Finally showing you what he can do now that he is with a real coach in Kevin O’Connell (who as a young quarterback once was filmed being cut by the Jets on “Hard Knocks,” all the way back in 2010). Darnold started to learn how to be a quarterback in the NFL when he was on Kyle Shanahan’s bench a year ago in San Francisco. Then he got with the Vikings and McCarthy got hurt and the rest is history, and what turned out to be history in a hurry for him and for the Vikings.
Darnold, so you know, doesn’t even turn 28 until next June, at this time when the Jets are trying to decide whether or not to bring back Aaron Rodgers, who will turn 42 about 49 weeks from now. The Jets gave up on Darnold and then they gave up on Zach Wilson and now, depending on what they decide, may be about to give up on Rodgers.
For sure, no one knows how everything will go for the Vikings the rest of the way. They are in the heavyweight division of pro football this season with the Lions and the Packers. They get the Packers before they get the Lions next Sunday, and so a lot can happen to them between now and their first playoff game.
But Sudden Sam Darnold has happened for them this season. Whatever happens from here, he has quarterbacked 15 games for his new team and won 13 of them, and has been the same kind of star for them that Saquon Barkley has been for the Eagles.
No. 2 in that draft. No. 3 in that draft. One going for a record. The other one still with a shot at best record in his conference. In a season when their former teams have combined to win six football games in total, and both seemed to have been eliminated from playoffs back around the autumn equinox.
How can the seasons get worse for the Giants and Jets? This is how. Saquon and Sam are. Nightmare. Just not for them.
BRING HIM BACK FOR PETE’S SAKE, GUMBEL WAS A BROADCASTING GREAT & HART NEEDS TO LIGHTEN UP …
Uncle Steve needs to bring back the bear.
Meaning Mr. Alonso.
The Polar Bear himself.
Somebody asked me the other day if the Knicks have ever had four different players capable of dropping 40 points on the other team, on any given night.
Well, as a matter of fact they have.
Willis had 40-plus games in his career, and so did Clyde.
So did Dave DeBusschere and Earl the Pearl.
The best Bill Bradley ever did in the pros was 38.
But, man oh man, did he ever score 58 one time for Princeton in a consolation game in the NCAA Tournament.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with Brian Daboll.
But what I do know that not only did he make it to the playoffs with Daniel Jones as his quarterback, the two of them even won that game against the Vikings once.
And that ain’t nothing, as bad as things have gotten since.
You know who’s still interested in Aaron Rodgers’ cockeyed theories about vaccines?
He is.
Greg Gumbel, who passed away the other day, was one of the most gifted and versatile broadcasters in the history of sports television, able to move effortlessly from studio work to play-by-play.
But more than that, he was one of the great gentlemen in the history of that business.
As much of a pleasure as it was watching him, it was much more of a pleasure to have known him.
Season 2 of “The Diplomat” was even better than Season 1, and that is saying plenty.
Not just because of Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell in the leads, but also because they brought Allison Janney out of the bullpen for the late innings to set up Season 3.
I feel at this point as if I’m up to speed on Juan Soto’s suite situation at Citi Field.
Gleyber Torres was once a cornerstone of another youth movement that never was for the Yankees.
Josh Hart is as much a glue guy as the Knicks have ever had.
But he could think about lightening up a little bit on people having noticed that Mikal Bridges got off to kind of a slow start before he turned things around.
Hart acts as if people want to run Bridges out of town.
Come on.
Wow, you know it was a big Christmas shot by Steph Curry at the end of Warriors vs. Lakers when Steph got a double “bang” out of Mike Breen.
“The Big Empty,” coming in January from my pal Robert Crais, is the best Elvis Cole-Joe Pike book he’s ever written.
And THAT is saying plenty.
There have been two great times, truly, in the history of the Jets, and Rex Ryan was the coach for one of them.
With Mark Sanchez as his quarterback.
Is the Seahawks-Bears game over yet?
I think I blacked out sometime during the third quarter.
Finally today:
A big-city shout-out to all those who still come to this place on Sundays, and still read our paper.
We’re still here.
And so are you.
Happy New Year.