Here are a dozen and a half Did You Knows about the Jets, the Giants, their games against each other, and their 48th annual preseason meeting in the sixth annual MetLife Bowl tonight:
- Ryan Fitzpatrick threw his first touchdown passes as a Jet, to Eric Decker and Zac Stacy, in last August's 28-18 MetLife Bowl win over the Giants.
- Brandon Marshall's 9-yard TD catch with 27 seconds left in regulation sent last year's regular-season game vs. the Giants into OT, when the Jets prevailed 23-20.
- The Jets won the first meeting against the Giants 37-14 in the 1969 preseason as Joe Namath threw for two TDs and Bill Mathis (photo below) scored twice.
- This is the sixth MetLife Bowl, with the Jets having won the MetLife Bowl Trophy in three of the five previous meetings.
- Brant Boyer, in his first season as the Jets' special teams coordinator, spent the 2010 summer as a Giants training camp coaching intern.
- The Jets and Giants have played 60 games overall, with the Jets leading the series 30-29-1 and the only tie, 31-31, coming in the 1972 preseason at the Yale Bowl (Namath handing off to John Riggins in that game below).
- Giants secondary coach/safeties David Merritt and assistant strength & conditioning coach Markus Paul were Jets assistant coaches in the early 2000s.
- New Giants DT Damon "Snacks" Harrison played his first four NFL seasons as a key contributor in the middle of the Jets' defensive line.
- Pepper Johnson, who started his playing career with 7 seasons as a Giant and ended it with 2 years as the Jets' MLB, is in his 2nd season as Jets DL coach.
Darrell McClover in 2006 and Eric Smith in 2010 are the last Jets to block punts at home in the preseason, with both rejections coming against the Giants.
- Mike Battle ('69), Adrian Murrell ('95), Leon Johnson ('98) & Walt Powell last year are all Jets who returned punts for TDs vs. the Giants in the preseason.
- Against the Giants, Jets MLB David Harris (photo above) had a game-high 9 tackles in last year's RS game and notched a sack and an INT in the 2011 Christmas Eve matchup.
- The Giants' Eli Manning has started the last 10 games in the Jets-Giants preseason series, the longest starting streak by any QB in the long rivalry.
- The only other time before 2015 that the Jets downed the Giants twice in the same year, once in the preseason and once in the regular season, was in 1981 (Joe Klecko notched one of his 4 sacks of Giants QBs in that game).
- WR Wesley Walker caught an 18-yard TD pass from QB Richard Todd with 1:24 to play to lift the Jets over the Giants 27-23 in the teams' 1978 summer meeting.
- The last Jet to intercept 3 passes in a preseason game was S Darrol Ray, who turned that hat trick in August 1982 against the Giants.
- Giants kickers Josh Brown and Randy Bullock were the kickers in the '15 Jets-Giants RS game. Bullock's OT field goal put the Jets ahead, Brown's miss secured the Jets' win.
- Jets DE Muhammad Wilkerson has had sacks in 3 games vs. the Giants, including half-sack in last year's preseason victory.
