Complete meltdown in all three phases as Giants throttled by Cowboys in opener
After being decimated by the Dallas Cowboys, 40-0, in their season opener, the Giants are in fix-it mode with, perhaps, a bit of soul-searching mixed in.
That’s a rough way to start a season.
On a rainy Sunday night at MetLife Stadium, the Giants disappointed their fans and themselves, and Brian Daboll wasn’t inclined to mince words.
“We got skunked here,” the Giants’ second-year coach said. “When you play a game like that, nothing is good enough. Our job is to go back and look at it with a critical eye. There’s a lot to work on, and that’s what we’ll do.”
A bit later in his postgame news conference, Daboll added: “Don’t sugarcoat it. It was a bad game and that’s on me, and we’ll work to fix what we have to fix. There’s certainly a lot.”
The Giants were never really in this game — a
t least not after the first 10-play drive.
And what a drive it was.
Facing a third-and-2 at the Cowboys’ 8, the Giants were in position to get points, only to have a false start on left tackle Andrew Thomas followed by a fumble by rookie center John Michael Schmitz that was recovered by quarterback Daniel Jones. Then Juanyeh Thomas sliced all but untouched through the Giants’ line and blocked Graham Gano’s 45-yard field-goal attempt. It was recovered by Noah Igbinoghene, who ran it back for a 58-yard touchdown. (The extra point was missed.)
That series alone, on this night, was enough to do in the Giants.
As it was, the Giants had the ball for 10:54 of the first quarter and had nothing to show for it. It was the Cowboys who were opportunistic, on that play and on this night.
Said the longest-tenured Giant, Sterling Shepard, “One loss isn’t going to define the season for us. This is a fix-it-quick league and we have to get back to work as soon as possible and we have to fix things because we’re going to see them week in and week out until we do.
“It’s a tough one. Everybody’s feeling it right now. But we have a lot of guys with a lot of mental toughness, and I feel we have the guys who are prepared to come back into work and get things back on the right track. I think we have a group of great mentally tough guys, and I think that’s encouraging.”
Shepard is a believer, especially in his teammates and in his team. “I feel like everybody needs to look at what they did and be very critical of themselves,” he said. “Like I said, it’s a fix-it-quick league and everybody has an individual part to play and as grown men, as NFL athletes, we have to look at this tape and figure out what we need to fix.”
That will be a long list.
Gano, who also missed a field-goal attempt wide left, limped into the imaging room at the stadium to undergo tests.
“I think I was cleated in the [right] calf. I don’t even know when it happened. I guess I’ll see it on film,” he said. “I think I’ll be fine. I’ve played with a broken back, broken ankles, broken femur. I’ll be fine. I’ll figure it out. It’s Game 1. We got our [butts] kicked tonight, but it’s a long season. We’ve got a good group of guys and it’s one game at a time.”
The Giants looked almost like a team that the season snuck up on.
No receiver had more than Darren Waller’s three catches for 36 yards.
Saquon Barkley was held to 51 yards on 12 carries. He added three receptions for 12 yards.
In the locker room, which was almost silent, there were varying reactions.
“Obviously, it’s tough to lose and it’s tough to lose in this fashion, but you can’t dwell on it,” tackle Evan Neal said. “Obviously, we wanted to come out here and put on a better performance, but the result we got is the result we got. It’s behind us now.”
Defensive tackle Leonard Williams described his postgame feelings as “a little bit of anger, a little bit of embarrassment.”
“I think we obviously didn’t come out here and perform the way we wanted to,” he said, “but at the same time, I think we prepared well this camp, we prepared well this week, and what we put on display this week is not us. I think the leaders in this room know that and this team knows that, and I think we’re going to make sure we don’t let something like that happen again where we didn’t put our best performance on the field today.”
Waller was more succinct.
“When you don’t do those little things,” he said, “they turn into the avalanche that you end up seeing on the scoreboard.”
The Giants trailed 26-0 at halftime, at which point they had given up touchdowns on defense, offense and special teams.
Dallas’ first offensive possession ended with a 21-yard field goal by Brandon Aubrey that made it 9-0.
Somehow things got worse on the next Giants possession. On third-and-19, Jones threw to Barkley, but as he gathered in the ball, he was hit by Trevon Diggs. The ball popped into the air and was intercepted by DaRon Bland, who returned it 22 yards for a touchdown.
Suddenly, it was 16-0 Cowboys with 2:22 left in the first quarter, and their offense had scored only three points.
Under pressure from Parsons, Jones forced a throw as he was headed out of bounds, and it was intercepted by Stephon Gilmore at the Giants’ 38. That miscue set up Tony Pollard’s 2-yard touchdown run to make it 26-0 with 8:03 left in the second quarter.
With Neil Best
Kimberly Jones covers the Giants for Newsday, a beat she first worked in the early 2000s before joining the YES Network to cover the Yankees. She worked for the NFL Network for more than a decade and has been heard semi-regularly on WFAN.
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