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The NFL is not divided into the AFC and the NFC as much as it is divided into two more distinct groups:
1) The teams that have quarterbacks who give you a chance to win on any given Sunday.
2) The teams that do not.
For a boatload of money, the Packers reaffirmed their standing on the right side of that gulf by bringing back Aaron Rodgers. For the price of three players and five draft picks, including two first-rounders, the Broncos joined the ranks of the relevant by completing a monumental trade for Seattle’s franchise player, Russell Wilson.
The price of doing big quarterback business has never been higher, and for good reason. No position is more valuable in American team sports. If you don’t have a quarterback, you get relegated the way struggling soccer clubs get relegated overseas. The worst Premier League teams in England are demoted to the second-tier league known as The Championship.
The Giants and Jets are stuck in The Championship, because they don’t have quarterbacks who can compete for, you know, a championship.
On paper, both MetLife Stadium tenants have bigger problems than Daniel Jones and Zach Wilson. But in reality, if you don’t have a player under center or in shotgun formation who inspires great faith in his teammates, there can be no bigger NFL problem than that.
The Giants and Jets averaged a combined 16.7 points per game last year, about two touchdowns shy of the league’s best offenses. Their fans suffered through their respective 4-13 seasons while watching other teams play video-game football, deploying athletic, rifle-armed passers and acrobatic receivers in their throw-it-all-over-creation approach. As the Giants and Jets stumbled about from one possession to the next, it really felt like they were playing a different sport.
A much less entertaining and fulfilling sport.
The Packers didn’t want to take the chance that Jordan Love might get them relegated into that league, so they stayed with a 38-year-old diva who has won 67 percent of his regular-season starts. You can argue that Green Bay is investing a ton in a quarterback who has claimed one Super Bowl title in 14 first-string seasons and who owns an 11-10 playoff record, but then again, Rodgers has led Green Bay to 11 postseason trips. He is a first-ballot Hall of Famer who gives the Packers a credible chance to win every week in every season.
The Broncos? They were done trying with the Trevor Siemians, Brock Osweilers, Case Keenums, Drew Locks and Teddy Bridgewaters. They reached two Super Bowls and won a title with an aging Peyton Manning, and now go with a younger 30-something, Wilson, who has won 66 percent of his regular-season starts and has delivered eight seasons of double-figure victories in 10 attempts. Wilson would own two Super Bowl rings instead of one if his former head coach, Pete Carroll, didn’t get head-faked by Bill Belichick.
So the Broncos got themselves promoted back into the big leagues with the Packers, the Rams, the Chiefs, the Bengals, the Bills & Co. John Elway saw what Matthew Stafford did for the Rams at age 34, and acquired his own Stafford. Nobody understands a winning quarterback’s value more than Elway, among the best to ever do it.
As it turned out, the deals for Wilson and Rodgers made for an early March Madness day on the calendar, and had to compel a lot of New Yorkers to ask, “When the hell do we get a star like that at the position that matters the most (by far) in the sport?”
Of course, the Giants might already employ a burgeoning star at quarterback had GM Dave Gettleman drafted Josh Allen over Saquon Barkley No. 2 overall in 2018. Instead, after firing a third straight coach after two seasons of uninspiring work, the Giants are asking Allen’s former offensive coordinator in Buffalo, Brian Daboll, to develop Jones into something far greater than the 12-25 starter he’s been.
Meanwhile, the Jets are left to hope that the No. 2-overall pick in 2021, Wilson, emerges in his second season as a long-term divisional threat to Allen and New England’s Mac Jones. Just like with Daniel Jones on the other side of MetLife, it’s anyone’s guess whether Wilson can pull it off.
That cold truth leaves New York fans longing for some certainty at quarterback. Eli Manning retired a .500 regular-season starter, but in his prime No. 10 gave his teammates belief every time he laced ’em up. Go ask them. That belief meant a ton in the Giants’ two Super Bowl runs.
But right now, in the wake of a seismic offseason day, the Giants and Jets aren’t in position to make any kind of championship run. They have been relegated. They are competing in the wrong league.
The league without quarterbacks who can consistently compete with Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson.
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