Derailing talk of a Subway Super Bowl

New York-New York for all the marbles?

Start spreadin’ the news if you like, but not everyone in that city is gung-ho on the increasing chatter of the New York Giants and the New York Jets playing each other for the Lombardi Trophy.

Giants great Harry Carson would love to hear talk of a so-called Subway Super Bowl go away until the championship matchup is actually determined.

“It’s very premature for anyone after 10, 11 games to look down that road,” said Carson, a Hall of Fame linebacker.

“Fans have a tendency of looking ahead. It’s not the first time people have talked about a Subway Super Bowl and were sorely disappointed.”

Still, it’s tempting to dip a toe in the bubbling hot tub of conjecture.

The Giants, defending Super Bowl champions, are 10-1 heading into today’s game at Washington. The Jets, who play host to Denver today, have won five in a row and are coming off a victory over previously undefeated Tennessee.

“We’re probably better than what people gave us a chance to be at this point,” said Jets quarterback Brett Favre, whose 8-3 team is one victory away from its longest winning streak in a decade. “What that means for the future remains to be seen. It definitely puts us in a good position at this point.”

Like the 2007 Giants, these new-look Jets got off to a painfully slow start. They lost two of three before winning seven of their last eight. A week after beating New England for sole possession of first place in the AFC East, the Jets knocked off the Titans to pull to within two games of them for home-field advantage in the AFC.

In a story that compares this Jets season to the one in 1998, when the team was 12-4 and lost to Denver in the conference championship game, the New York Daily News pointed out these curious similarities:

The 1998 team also featured an older quarterback who reinvented himself as a green-and-white galvanizer: Vinny Testaverde. Favre is on pace to throw 29 touchdown passes -- the number Testaverde threw when he set the club record that season.

The ’98 team started 2-3, including a loss to the woeful St. Louis Rams. This season’s Jets started 3-3, with a loss to the woeful Oakland Raiders.

On Nov. 22, 1998, the Jets won by 21 in Nashville. Ten years and one day later, the Jets won by 21 in Nashville.

Then again, that Jets team didn’t get to the Super Bowl, and there’s certainly no guarantee this one will. Regardless, fans can dream, can’t they?

Sure, but leave Carson out of it.

“The ball bounces very strangely in this game,” he said. “A play could go against the Giants or Jets. Lose some momentum and things start going downhill. Anything can happen.”

Just look at last season’s Giants. At this point last year, the smart money said Coach Tom Coughlin was well on his way to being fired, and that Eli Manning was anything but a sure bet to remain the team’s quarterback.

Now, the Giants are 10-1 and, if they win at Washington, will take a three-game lead over Dallas in the NFC East. Through 11 games, New York has scored a league-high 329 points, including 35, 36, 30 and 37 in its last four games.

After the Redskins, the Giants play Philadelphia, at Dallas, Carolina and at Minnesota -- anything but a breezy regular-season finish.

Then again, the Giants have left a lot of good teams in their wake, beating in the last five weeks Pittsburgh, Dallas, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Arizona.

“We’ve known that we have a tough schedule,” Manning said. “We knew that five weeks ago -- that it was going to be a tough road ahead of us, and we were going to be playing a lot of good teams. And it’s going to continue.”

And talk of a possible Subway Super Bowl will continue too.

For now, talk is just that: talk.

Six years ago, there was similar buzz surrounding the possibility of a Giants-Jets showdown.

“If there were to be two New York teams, I couldn’t imagine it,” Giants defensive end Michael Strahan said at the time. “I couldn’t imagine it. I think they’d have to call out the National Guard for extra protection because it would get ugly.”

But in the end, it was the Raiders versus the Buccaneers for the championship, meaning hype surrounding a potential all-New York Super Bowl wound up being just like the subway.

Fleeting and deep underground.

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sam.farmer@latimes.com