Giants' back Brandon Jacobs finds a hole against the Redskins. (Larry Downing/Reuters)

Looking back on September 10, 2001, the Denver Broncos hosted the New York Giants in a giant Monday Night Football game. To conclude week one of the regular season, the Broncos ran away with a 31-20 victory over the Giants. However, they also took a huge hit when wide receiver Ed McCaffrey broke his leg making a great catch, and was lost for the season.

That hit was nothing compared to the hit the New York Giants and the rest of their city took the next day, September 11, 2001.

Exactly 10 years after the catastrophic attacks, a very different Giants team will take the field to take on the Washington Redskins, a team from another city that was just as effected by the event that put the United States of America on high alert. The Sunday night game features the Giants’ brother team, the New York Jets, hosting the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys are not America’s Team on this day. The Giants, Jets, Redskins, and Steelers clearly are.

As teams across the league honor the 10 year anniversary of 9/11, flags will fly high, flyovers will fly even higher, and players will be allowed to wear red, white, and blue shoes and gloves without being fined.

In the NFL, we mark yards, we mark touchdowns, and we mark milestones. Tomorrow the NFL and its fans will mark a decade gone by since national external chaos turned into internal sadness. We mark a decade where victims are missed everyday, and families are honored for their loved ones’ courage. We honor our service men and women, those who have died in battle and those who are currently fighting our in the war, and those that have returned to U.S. territory. The time period is branded by our strength as a country and our ability to rebuild. However, don’t mistake that for fully recovering.

It seems that when athletes are ready and willing to lay it all out on the line, they want the moment to count deeply. They want people to understand the magnitude of meaning behind the effort.
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