Two long-suffering fan bases, one that hasn’t even seen another Super Bowl in the half-century since their lone win, and one that has seen a couple finals but is still over 50 years of not winning it all.
So, Joe Benigno and Peter Schwartz debated Friday (with a little help from Jerry Reco): who has the worse playoff losses, the Jets or the Knicks?
“Nobody has had more brutal playoff losses over the years than the Knicks,” noted huge Jets fan Joe actually said. “I mean, you go back to the nineties, I mean BRUTAL.”
“You wanna run down the Jets playoff losses? Bill Simpson, the AFC championship game, the game against Cleveland that Gastineau screwed up,” Peter Schwartz shot back. “Or, how about not showing up for the first half of the AFC championship game against Pittsburgh?”
Both Joe and Peter were at that game, so they get it, but there’s a difference even Joe understands.
“The Jets were not a championship contender every year for like 12-13 years in a row like the Knicks were – so every year, here I am, thinking this is the year we’re finally gonna win the championship,” Joe said. “Charles Smith under the basket. Houston beats us when Olajuwon gets his fingernail on Starks’ shot in Game 6. We lost Game 7 in ’95. Reggie Miller with 18 seconds left, and we lost Game 7 when Patrick misses the finger roll. And ’97, we’re up 3-1 on Miami, the whole bench incident happens and we blow it. This team was a championship contender every year!”
“You would have thought by accident they ran into one championship,” was all Jerry Recco could get in edgewise, but yeah, Joe had the laundry list, and that’s the difference.
“I am a Knicks fan, but the Jets hurt more,” Peter said. “When the Jets got there, the losses were painful.”
Oh, Joe gets it, but the Jets aren’t a perennial playoff team, right? So what does the impartial Nets/Cowboys guy Jerry Recco have to say?
“I would say the Knicks because of how good they were and how consistent they were, and they just could never finish,” Jerry said. “But when you lose in football, it’s brutal.”
Joe joked “I still have hemorrhoids from some of these games,” and at least everyone agrees that their playoff loss to Cleveland was the ‘worst one ever,’ even looking at the 10-0 lead they had in Denver in the AFC Championship Game.
Listen to the whole debate above!