If there is a Dallas Cowboys team the Giants have a chance to beat, it’s this one. Mike McCarthy’s squad is a mess, particularly on defense.
They are allowing 29.7 points per game, which is third worst in the NFL, and an unthinkable 185.7 rushing yards per game, which is dead last. They just lost as home underdogs and allowed 274 rushing yards to the Baltimore Ravens, for crying out loud.
And their leaders are desperately searching for answers.
“It’s just, like, at what cost are we just going to keep doing this to ourselves?” Micah Parsons said after Dallas fell to 1-2. “Right now, we’ve got people just trying to be Superman. People just gotta [handle] their own jobs, bro. I don’t even ever want to be Superman. We don’t need Supermans at all. We just need 11 guys playing together and, right now, it’s just not in unison.”
This is where Brian Daboll and the Giants (1-2) have to capitalize. The loser of this game will descend into sole possession of last place in the NFC East. Neither coach and neither team can afford to lose this game.
The Giants have been a Dallas doormat in recent years.
The Cowboys have won 13 of their last 14 meetings in this rivalry from 2017 through 2023. The Giants have lost six straight. Joe Schoen and Daboll are 0-4 against Dallas, getting outscored 140-53 in the last two seasons. And the Cowboys outscored them 89-17 in their two games last year.
That included a 40-0 disaster in last year’s season opener at MetLife Stadium.
“That game was embarrassing,” left tackle Andrew Thomas said Monday. “Home opener, that’s a tough way to lose. But it’s a new season, a new team … You want to win that game, so that’s what we’re looking forward to doing.”
Safety Jason Pinnock said “it’s a new day,” however, and the Giants’ attitude towards the Cowboys isn’t that different from a joke he always had with his big brother.
“It’s sort of like, he probably beat on me for 12 years, but that 13th, I’m going to bust your ass,” Pinnock said with a smile.
Obviously, beating Dallas is much easier said than done. The Giants are Dak Prescott’s favorite opponent.
The Cowboys quarterback has a 12-2 career record against New York, with 27 touchdown passes and eight interceptions. He is 5-1-0 against the Giants at MetLife Stadium. Dallas has scored 28.5 points per game as a team in those six meetings.
Prescott has only played the Giants in New Jersey twice in the past four seasons, with Cooper Rush (2022) and Andy Dalton (2020) under center at MetLife Stadium for the other two. The Cowboys’ newly minted, highest-paid player in the NFL still will be difficult for a susceptible Giants secondary to stop.
The big opportunity, though, is for Daboll, Daniel Jones and the Giants’ offense to keep their foot on a Cowboys defense desperate to stop the bleeding under new coordinator Mike Zimmer.
Dan Quinn, now Washington’s head coach, put the Giants offense in a blender the last two seasons as Dallas’ defensive coordinator. Zimmer, however, does not present as complicated a scheme. And his players are already talking about needing to fight harder, which is not a good sign.
“Unacceptable. We waited too long to fight,” corner Trevon Diggs said of the defense’s sluggish start against Baltimore.
Diggs, Parsons and pass rusher DeMarcus Lawrence talked about accountability and how it’s about actions, not words, down to the simplest task: stopping the run.
“Do what your coaches teach you,” Lawrence said. “Play your gaps, play your blocks, stay in your gaps. I’m included in this. I’m not discarded from this at all. It’s just the small things that we’ve gotta get back to doing, and we’ll do it this week.”
They’ll try. But the Giants have a chance to take advantage of a reeling division opponent coming off New York’s first win of the season in Cleveland.
If Giants backs Devin Singletary and Tyrone Tracy Jr. can produce like the run game functioned in Week 2 at Washington — and if Jones can use the read option half as effectively as the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson (14 carries, 87 yards, touchdown) did on Sunday — Dallas’ defense could be in for another long day.
They have to take advantage. The Cowboys, despite being 5-point road favorites, are beatable.
The Giants have to win Thursday.
