Eddie Castro’s SPORTS Jets/Giants Wrap-up

The NFL season has come to an end. If you’re a Jets or Giants fan, you are left shaking your heads in disbelief. Both the Jets and Giants will be sitting home on the couch watching the playoffs this year, as both closed out their seasons with disappointing finishes. It is easy to blame the quarterbacks and even injuries as a factor on why both teams failed to make the postseason. Fact is, there are other players who wear NFL jerseys and if one star goes down, the next man on line has to contribute and do his best to perform. Even though there will not be a New York team in this year’s tournament, it is still expected to be an exciting one. Both teams had high expectations, but did not live up to them at all.

For the Jets, since day 1 of training camp, it was nothing but distractions, with Tim Tebow coming to town, Darelle Revis reportedly unhappy about his contract and every week seeming to bring a new act to the Jets circus. Their offense was out of sync all year long and when Santonio Holmes, arguably their best weapon on offense went down with a season-ending foot injury, the offense continued to deteriorate every week. Mark Sanchez was horrible. There really is no other word you can put out there other than the word itself to describe his season. In fact the Jets as a team were nearly second to last in almost every offensive categories this year. The defense, which was a strong point for the team last year didn’t really live up to the hype as well. Just like the offense, their best player on defense went down for the season with an ACL injury and without him the Jets looked like a Divison III college team. This past Monday, in what is known as “Black Monday” for coaches who are on the hot seat, 7 coaches were fired and a few general managers lost their jobs as well. Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum was one of the GM’s who was given the pink slip. For the time being, coach Rex Ryan’s job appears to be safe. The Jets’ miserable season ended with a 28-9 loss to the Buffalo Bills. Looking forward to 2013, the Jets will be searching for a new GM, a running back, another receiver to take pressure off Holmes when he returns and maybe even a quarterback. Sanchez may have very well played his last game as a Jet and Tim Tebow appears to want out of New York.

As for the defending Super Bowl Champion New York Giants, it was just bad play by the team that costs them a shot to defend their title this year. So Hakeem Nicks and Ahmad Bradshaw were banged up all year long, still the Giants had the roster to get over the hump and play productive football towards the end. After a hot 6-2 start, the Giants won just three games after that and as they were losing games, quarterback Tony Romo and Robert Griffin III (RG3) were winning games for their respective teams, and overtook the Giants in the division. Opposing teams had Victor Cruz on their radar after the fantastic season he has last year, the more he got better , the more teams studied him on their scouting report. As a result there was not so much Salsa dancing going on this year. The Giants, unlike the Jets finished the season with a winning record at 9-7 despite missing the playoffs. The Giants looked like they were back to normal as they crushed the Eagles at home in their season finale by the score of 42-7. The win was a little too late as the Bears defeated the Lions, which ultimately eliminated the Giants from playoff contention. The Giants need to invest in a running back to take pressure the off of Eli Manning so that he wont have to drop back and throw the ball 40 times a game. Although both teams disappointed, next year is always promising. We’ll see what 2013 brings for both the Giants and Jets.

Sports Notes

: (Basketball): The Nets looked to try and recover from the beat down that the Spurs gave them to close out 2012. In 2013 the Nets look to get things back on track as they head to the nation’s capital to face the Washington Wizards on Friday night. Amar’e Stoudemire made his season debut against the Portland Trail Blazers in a 105-100 loss despite Carmelo Anthony dropping in 45 points. The Knicks look to capture their 1st victory in 2013 as they are at home to face the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday night.