The Knicks ended a 53-year wait and the whole city got to feel something it hadn’t in a long time. If you’re a Jets fan, you watched that parade footage and let yourself imagine it. That’s allowed. That’s the whole point of caring about a team.
So when Geno Smith stepped off the field after the first minicamp practice and said the Knicks gave the Jets “a little bit of added motivation,” it landed as a nice quote. “We’re motivated already,” Smith said, “but, man, just watching those guys win that championship, it has to do something for you as a competitor.”
It does do something. We’re not going to pretend it doesn’t. But it’s worth being clear-eyed about what it does and doesn’t mean for a team coming off 3-14.
What the players actually said
Breece Hall didn’t watch from his couch. He was in San Antonio for the clinching game Saturday night, in a suite alongside Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart, and he’s friendly with Knicks players Mikal Bridges and Tyler Kolek.
“I went to eat wings with Tyler the other day in the city,” Hall said. “I congratulated him and I’m like, ‘I can’t wait to have that feeling.’ So there’s definitely positive jealousy because I want my team to be able to do that as well.”
That’s an honest answer, and it’s a good one. “Positive jealousy” is exactly the right emotion for a player on a team that hasn’t sniffed a playoff in 15 years. Hall wants what Kolek has. Fine. So do we.
But want isn’t a depth chart. It’s June.
The part that actually matters: Glenn’s “competitive stamina”
Here’s where the conversation gets useful, and it’s the coach who got it there.
Aaron Glenn didn’t talk about the Knicks as a vibe. He talked about them as a habit. What he kept coming back to was “competitive stamina” — the way that team got stronger late, the improbable comebacks, the refusal to fold in the back half of a series. He brought it up to his own team back in April, at the start of the offseason program.
“That’s something that those men showed throughout that whole series and that’s a real thing,” Glenn said. He admitted you can’t really build it in OTAs because the physical part isn’t there yet. “But once we come to training camp, you can bet your ass that we’re going to work on competitive stamina, because those Knicks, those guys showed it.”
That’s the difference between a motivational quote and a coaching point. Glenn isn’t asking his players to feel inspired. He’s pointing at a specific, repeatable trait — finishing — and saying he’s going to drill it. Inspiration fades by Week 3. A habit you’ve trained shows up in the fourth quarter in November, which is precisely when this team has historically come apart.
The guardrail, because somebody has to hold it
The Jets sit at +20000 to win the Super Bowl, fourth-longest odds on the board per DraftKings. Nobody outside the building expects them to contend, and the recent history backs that up: 10 straight losing seasons, 15 years out of the playoffs, 57 years since the only Super Bowl this franchise has ever won.
A crosstown title doesn’t move any of that. The Knicks didn’t win because they got inspired; they won because they built a roster that could finish, then finished. The lesson isn’t “believe harder.” The lesson is “be good enough to close, and then close.”
Hall said it plainly: “We’re hungry. We’re going to try to surprise everybody this year.” Love the hunger. We just remember that hunger has been a June staple around here for a decade.
Bottom line
Borrowed belief is a fine place to start a season. The energy in the city is real, the players clearly feel it, and there’s nothing wrong with a 3-14 team grabbing a little fuel wherever it can find it.
But the Knicks didn’t hand the Jets anything except a reminder of what the end looks like. The work is still the work. So enjoy the spark — and then judge it the way it deserves to be judged, which is by what shows up in the fourth quarter when it’s cold and the season’s on the line. Glenn already told you that’s where he’s pointing. We’ll find out in November if it stuck.
That’s the JetCast position: love the energy, keep your feet on the ground.