Shortly after the New York Jets hired Rex Ryan to be their head coach in 2009, one of his first orders of business was to take aim at the New York Giants and their then-head coach Tom Coughlin.
In 2011, Ryan kicked that up a notch prior to a pivotal Christmas Eve game.
“That’s the old saying: ‘Talk is cheap, money buys whiskey,'” Ryan said reacting to Coughlin’s motto. “I understand all of that. You know, that’s the truth, but I don’t care about Tom Coughlin or anybody else.”
Ryan proceeded to obsess over the Giants until the moment he was fired, and that persists to this day.
Several other Jets who have come and gone in recent years suffered from the same affliction, and now you can add first-round offensive tackle Mekhi Becton to that list.
After being passed over by the Giants in favor of Georgia’s Andrew Thomas, Becton feels determined to prove New York’s A team wrong and is already joining a long list of Jets who can’t get Big Blue out of their heads.
“And I’m going to tell you this,” Duke Manyweather, Becton’s O-line trainer, told the New York Daily News. “He is absolutely happy that he ended up in New York. He said, ‘The Jets are a great landing spot for me. I want to be a Jet. And guess what? We’re going to show up the Giants.’ So that’s already on his mind.”
So, Becton gets drafted by the Jets and his first instinct is to set up the Giants rent free in his head? Talk about fitting right in with Gang Green and embracing their little brother inferiority complex.
That sort of distracted mindset is likely why the Giants and head coach Joe Judge passed on Becton in the first place.
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