Weekend Shows Stark Contrasts Between Jets and Giants When Eli Manning lowered his shoulder into the Packers' Tramon Williams, it sent a message to the rest of the Giants: Do whatever is necessary. For the sake of take-away images, the holiday weekend began at MetLife Stadium with Mark Sanchez running into the backside of a Jets offensive lineman and immediately becoming the butt of N.F.L. jokes nationwide. It ended with Eli Manning lowering his throwing shoulder into a Green Bay cornerback and emerging heroically for an act of aggression that under less fortunate circumstances would have left him scorned for not figuratively using his head. "That wouldn't be recommended on a normal basis," Giants Coach Tom Coughlin said of Manning's attempt to plow through the Packers" Tramon Williams in the first quarter Sunday night in a successful attempt for a first down. To see him do that, it kind of sent a message to the rest of our team - whatever you have to do to succeed, do it. Isn't that - along with the inverse of that - what currently defines the rival residents of the rather drab edifice that hovers over an intersection of North Jersey roadway? Across the 16-game season, many a weekend can feel like the proverbial fork in that road, but this last one sure demanded that the Giants and the Jets understand the circumstances in play. Losing to the Packers would have brought the Giants back to the divisional pack and sounded the alarm for a December collapse with a tough schedule ahead. Beating the Patriots would have propped up the Jets" playoff chances with much less imposing opponents the rest of the way. After Sanchez and the Jets self-destructed in a 49-19 loss to Tom Brady and the Patriots, Manning and the Giants slaughtered Aaron Rodgers and the Packers, 38-10. By weekend's conclusion, it was as if MetLife had been named Giants Stadium, the way the old building was, and Woody Johnson's Jets were more squatters than co-tenants. "The core is here, we're confident that when our back is against the wall we'll come out and fight and perform," the Giants" veteran right guard, Chris Snee, said after Manning threw three touchdown passes and the defense sacked Rodgers five times. The big players will come out and make plays. Much had been made about Manning's so-called slump, or three previous games without a touchdown pass. On television, Phil Simms channeled his inner Tiki Barber and opined that he didn't rate Manning an elite quarterback. Manning's response was to erase Simms as the Giants" career leader in touchdown passes, 200 and counting. Manning called the occasion of being coupled with Simms "an honor" while characteristically leaving untouched the sweet subject of passing him. With two Super Bowl titles won within five years, the great appeal of Manning is that he knows who he is and that inner belief - the residue of success at the highest level - personifies the team. Conversely, the question that Coach Rex Ryan and the Jets have been unable to answer all season is: Who are your leaders? Who are your playmakers? What defines you? Until further notice, it is the slapstick that resulted in the Patriots" astonishing 35-point second quarter on Thanksgiving night. To recap the weekend, the Giants and the Jets both sent fans home early, but so demoralized were the latter's that Ed Anzalone - better known as the J-E-T-S chanting Fireman Ed - exited before halftime and later announced in a published report that he would no longer be the country's best-known male cheerleader after 26 years. He vowed to still bleed green but explained that the scorn he was getting from other Jets fans for wearing Sanchez's No. 6 jersey had convinced him that "society has lost and is continuing to lose respect for one another." This is not a condition limited to Jets fans, although the team's competitive decay after consecutive years of reaching the conference championship game has been especially bitter. What would have happened had the Jets won last year's Christmas Eve game against their stadium co-tenants and gone to the playoffs - instead of the Giants - for the third straight year under Ryan? How differently would the off-seasons have played out for both teams? How much greater a margin for error would Ryan and Sanchez have now? The Simms debate became news when he asserted that Manning was not in the same league as Rodgers or Brady. But Rodgers, under pressure all night Sunday, looked more like Sanchez than Brady. R. A. Dickey can win 20 games for a bad baseball team, but no quarterback can be great, or much good, without a support system in place. The more relevant comparisons regarding New York metropolitan area quarterbacks - and head coaches - are those that will invariably impact the environment around teams and players operating within one decent spiral of each other. Fair or not, Manning's reputation for producing when it counts has illuminated Sanchez's penchant for ill-timed, boneheaded mistakes. Coughlin's attention to detail and his consistency tend to make Ryan's words and actions - for example, his decision to dress Tim Tebow against New England despite fractured ribs - all the more curious and sloppy. It is the price the owner Johnson pays for failing in his bid to build his own stadium on Manhattan's Far West Side and not considering a return to Queens to build on the Jets" historical brand. This won't always be the arrangement in the new building, Fireman Ed and Jets fans should know, and wasn't until last Christmas Eve. But it is the harsh reality now. By late Sunday night, Coughlin raved about how well his 7-4 Giants played in the red zone and the green zone, while Ryan was home wondering what it would take to get his 4-7 Jets out of a dimension of sight, sound and mind known as the Twilight Zone.