The New York Giants and their co-tenants at MetLife Stadium, the New York Jets, both have legions of celebrity fans backing them.
Count New Jersey native George R.R. Martin — the creator of the HBO megahit series Game of Thrones — as one of them.
The 73-year-old Martin appeared on a podcast hosted by The Ringer recently to talk New York football. The Bayonne native is a fan of both teams and is hopeful that one — or both — can break out of a decade-long losing pattern.
“They partly had great drafts because they were so terrible last year so they were very high on the draft ,” Martin told host Bryan Curtis.
“They both had two picks in the top 10 and, you know, most of the talking heads seemed to think that they did really well with those picks and both teams are going to be better this year. But I hope that is true because I watched them every week. And I tell you these last few years, you know, it’s been brutal because they’ve both been terrible.”
Martin said that he isn’t a demonstrative fan who throws things at the TV or yells, but admitted the blight on the fans of both franchises have made him ‘depressed’ at times.
“I’ve been following both teams since the ’60s here. It always seemed like when one was good, the other one was bad, you know? I mean, when the Jets had Joe Namath and were winning a Super Bowl and contending, the Giants were terrible. And then the Giants got good and the Jets got terrible,” Martin said. “So it went back and forth. But these last few years they’ve both been terrible. So my Sunday, which is my traditional day off — I mean, most I work seven days a week, except during the fall, during football season, and I work six days a week and I take off Sundays to watch the Giants and the Jets.”
Football Sundays in the New York Metro area have been relatively quiet since the Giants won Super Bowl XLVI in February 2012. Big Blue has logged in eight losing seasons over the last nine while Gang Green has just one winning campaign since appearing in the AFC Championship Game in 2011.
A lotto the two team’s success hinges on how their respective ‘franchise’ quarterbacks develop. Martin is hopeful that the Jets’ Zach Wilson and the Giants’ Daniel Jones can drag their teams back to prominence.
“He has all these new weapons, and the same thing with the Giants,” Martin said of Wilson. “We gotta see how good they are now that they got some strength for the offensive line. And we’ll see how good Danny Dimes really can be if he has protection and receivers. But I don’t know.”
It’s nothing new for Martin to say he doesn’t know. Keep in mind, he’s still writing the GOT stories as we speak.
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