Giants-Cowboys on Opening Night is nothing new, but curtain-raising rivalry has been one-sided
Giants quarterback Daniel Jones warms up before an NFL football game against the Dallas Cowboys, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023, in East Rutherford, N.J. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
The Giants and Cowboys began their seasons on Sunday night in familiar fashion: By playing against one another.
The NFL clearly regards the old rivals as quality opening night programming, given how often the league does this sort of thing.
Sunday night’s game at MetLife Stadium marked the 12th time in the 64 seasons since the Cowboys debuted that the teams have met in Week 1.
The curtain-raising rivalry has been one-sided, though.
The Cowboys had won 10 of the 11 openers before Sunday night, with three victories in the teams’ four “Sunday Night Football” meetings since 2007.
Some of the 11 previous meetings have been duds, some memorable, and all TV ratings winners, which is why the teams keep getting scheduled, naturally.
Perhaps the most meaningful for the Cowboys – and the most deflating for the Giants – came on “Monday Night Football” in 1995.
The Giants had gone 9-7 the previous season – finishing with a six-game winning streak and narrowly missing the playoffs
There was talk in training camp of finally “narrowing the gap” on the lordly Cowboys, who won Super Bowls after the 1992 and ’93 seasons.
Not so much. The Cowboys won, 35-0.
That game’s most memorable moment came on the Cowboys’ opening drive when Emmitt Smith ran through a huge hole and went 60 yards for a touchdown.
Smith had enough time to turn around and wag his finger at Giants cornerback Phillippi Sparks as he neared the end zone.
Smith later apologized to the Giants for his taunting. “The only thing I didn't like about the touchdown run was I got too excited and did some things I should have never done," he said.
As part of his celebration, Smith also removed his helmet, an action the NFL banned in 1997.
The Giants outgained the Giants, 461 yards to 211, and Smith finished with 163 yards and four touchdowns.
So much for narrowing the gap. The Giants finished 5-11 and the Cowboys went on to win their most recent Super Bowl.
Most of the recent openers have been in Texas, not New Jersey, including in 2019, when the Cowboys won, 35-17.
Those Giants got off to a 2-11 start, and coach Pat Shurmur was fired after the season.
Since then, the Cowboys have lost three openers in a row, none against the Giants.
Entering Sunday night, they had not won an opener on the road since 2012, when they beat the defending Super Bowl champion Giants, 24-17, with three touchdown passes by Tony Romo.
The teams’ first opening day meeting was in 1965, a 31-2 victory for the Cowboys. That one was a dud, but there were several good games among the first 11 openers.
The sole Giants victory came in 2016, by a 20-19 score, snapping a nine-game winning streak for the Cowboys over the Giants in openers. That game was Dak Prescott's debut.
The Cowboys nearly pulled that one out. They took over at their own 20-yard line with about a minute left and drove to the Dallas 46 with 12 seconds left.
Prescott then completed a pass to Terrance Williams in Giants territory, but rather than get out of bounds to set up a potential game-winning field goal, Williams turned inside and was tackled, allowing the clock to run out.
One year earlier, the Cowboys won, 27-26, in a doozy of an opener. The Giants led 23-20 with less than two minutes left and had a first down at the Dallas 4-yard line.
Thanks to some questionable clock management by the Giants, they settled for a field goal that made it 26-20 but left too much time on the clock for Romo and the Cowboys.
Giants quarterback Eli Manning threw the ball away on third down when he should have done anything other than that to keep the clock moving.
Romo took possession with a minute-and-a-half left and marched the Cowboys down the field, capped by an 11-yard touchdown pass to Jason Witten with seven seconds left.
The extra point was the winning margin.
“We couldn’t afford to give them the extra time,” Manning said afterward. “The smarter thing would have been to take the sack.
“I’ve got to know that — 100%. It was bad clock management. We could have left them only a little time on the clock.”
The openers are only a sliver of the Giants-Cowboys fun over the decades, of course.
Even the first time the teams met, in 1960, was memorable – a 31-31 tie at Yankee Stadium that was the only non-loss in the Cowboys’ inaugural season.
But there was more at stake than mere pride on Sunday night. The Giants lost both games to the Cowboys in 2022 and are in dire need of better results against the NFC East to get where they want to go under the Joe Schoen/Brian Daboll regime.
And remember, part of the fun of division rivalries is this: No matter what happened on Sunday night, the teams will see each other again in Texas on Nov. 12.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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