Giants would love to knock Cowboys down another peg

For the second week in a row, the Giants are facing a team with a 1-4 record. Another trap game?

Hardly. It's Cowboys Week for the Giants, the first of two within a month. And this one comes with a special benefit. If the Giants can manage a win in Dallas on Monday night, it could be the knockout punch that sends the Cowboys to the canvas for good.

The Cowboys are teetering on collapse, coming off a loss to the Vikings on Sunday. Their dreams of becoming the first team to host and play in the same Super Bowl are quickly vanishing into a haze of turnovers and bad penalties. This is a team that has more excessive-celebration penalties this season - two - than victories to actually celebrate.

With more than half the season remaining, a Giants win won't mathematically eliminate the Cowboys. But it would turn the NFC East into a three-team race.

"It just gives us a great opportunity to put some more distance between the two of us," Giants tight end Kevin Boss said Monday. "If we can go there and put them to 1-5 and we go to 5-2, that's going to be very beneficial when it gets close to December and January."

The Giants still were relishing Sunday's win over the Lions, so they had very little in the way of trash talk to start spitballing at the Cowboys. Even Chris Canty, the former Cowboys defensive end who came to the Giants last year, made it clear he will not be adding to the semiannual war of words between Dallas and New York.

"I'm not answering any questions about the Dallas Cowboys this week," Canty said in a loud voice. "How about that? All right."

Said Giants receiver Steve Smith: "I'm happy we're in our position, and that's all we can really worry about. They're still a great team, and the season's not over. So we know they're going to be ready to play."

Still, the Cowboys? One win in five games? That's got to be a little shocking.

"Oh, man, I'd be very surprised," Boss said when asked what his reaction to that record would have been at the start of the season. "I can't believe that they're 1-4 with all the talent they've got on that team. Something's not right there. But we definitely know they're still a very good football team."

So are the Giants, who are tied for the best record in the NFC and have won three straight games in relatively convincing fashion. But the Giants have not played any division games. On Monday night, they will be the last team in the league to face its first division opponent.

The NFL had a new approach to this season's schedule, trying to have division games in the final few weeks of the season to avoid the situation in which teams clinch early and rest stars. But for the Giants, it means a traffic jam of NFC East teams in the coming weeks.

Each time they face the Cowboys, Eagles and Redskins, they will face that team again within four weeks.

"They come rapid-fire here pretty quick," coach Tom Coughlin said.

And it starts Monday night in Dallas.