Plenty of blame to go around after Cowboys loss in Giants game
Well, that wasn’t much fun. After all the offseason and preseason hype, the Dallas Cowboys put a whole lot of same old, same old on the field in falling to the New York Giants.
Disappointment is the mood of the week. We hope they can turn things around against the Washington Commanders, but things went so badly in so many ways. Our Sean Martin and Tom Ryle look at what they each felt was the biggest letdown.
Tom – For me, it was the defense. Ever since last season ended with a whimper, a consensus has grown that all this team really needs is to put an average defense on the field, and we should be able to amass enough wins to get back to the playoffs.
To a certain extent, we did this to ourselves. We saw draft picks, trades, and cap space poured into the defense, and a shiny new defensive coordinator brought in to get more out of them. Surely that would lift this team from the depths of the worst NFL defenses. None of it paid any dividends we could see.
As our Dan Rogers pointed out so well, the Cowboys only managed six offensive series on the night, and just two after halftime. The Giants played a highly effective game of keepaway. Dallas held the ball for under 24 minutes. No matter how good your offense is, it is almost impossible to do much when most of the game it is just watching from the sidelines.
Sean – I don’t do personal anecdotes all that often, but this time I really feel like it’s important to provide context on this disappointing loss in the swamps of Jersey. Even as someone that said almost all offseason leading up to this game that I see it as one of the most even Cowboys-Giants matchups in a long time.
It brought me right back to the feeling of growing up a Dallas fan in Jersey and sweating out these rivalry games knowing what it would mean at school if the Cowboys lost. I’ve even been open about wanting this level of competitiveness back in the rivalry, as opposed to the game being devalued a little during the past dominance by the Cowboys.
Well, Brian Schottenheimer’s team got the test I guess it needed right off the jump, and failed miserably to rise to the occasion and prove they’re ready to truly be competitive this year, or show improvement in any of the areas we expected.
Since Schotty is the man still in charge of the play-calling on offense, I’m going to continue with my gripes about the offense. We had to “wait all day for Sunday night” to start off this season, creating opportunity to watch other teams play first, like the Bears scoring 59 points to a team that beat the Cowboys last year or the Vikings going from Kyler Murray to Carson Wentz and still dropping 39.
Looking back on these games and others after the Cowboys managed just 20 points with a killer interception in there too, it feels like every advantage we’re supposed to be talking about this offense having is the opposite of what’s actually working elsewhere around the league.
Explosive runs from backs that can punish defenders on the second and third level with speed? The Cowboys don’t have Jaydon Blue or Malik Davis anymore, and while we’re on it couldn’t get Javonte Williams going either.
Passing out of condensed formations with more usage for tight ends than wide receivers? Nope, the Cowboys are built to spread it out, and while we’re here this time, didn’t do nearly enough creative things to free up CeeDee Lamb or George Pickens. These players are good enough to get open anyway, which they did a little bit, and then both dropped the ball.
To make matters even worse the Giants offense was actually better in a lot of these areas going against the Cowboys defense. For me, the pressure is firmly on for this Commanders game because of it, and that’s from someone that anticipated a possible loss to the Giants – the way it actually unfolded was still that bad.
Sorry for the long therapy session Tom, but like I said, Cowboys-Giants has always been personal. Forget bringing back memories of the 2025 Cowboys defense getting shredded, Jaxson Dart was reminding me of the way Eli Manning used to rip Cowboys fans’ hearts out. And this time instead of having a good Tony Romo performance to match, we got four quarters of Prescott needing to be near perfect without enough help. Anyway, back to you.
Tom – Oh, I never said I wasn’t disappointed in the offense, with all the implications it has for the rest of the season. You can almost see when Dak feels like it is all on his shoulders, because he starts trying to do just a little too much.
But it wasn’t just the rest of the offense that was dropping that load on him. I think the biggest problem was that the supposedly new look defense under Christian Parker looked, well, just like the one Matt Eberflus fielded.
Dallas couldn’t buy a stop, with New York converting nine of eleven third downs. (As a side note, one reason I am more upset with the D than the O is that the Cowboys went eight for eleven, normally a sign of a successful attack.) Many of those conversions were demoralizing. Nineteen yards on 3rd and 10. Sixteen on 3rd and 9. Thirteen on another 3rd and 9. And plenty of short conversions as the Giants were quite efficient on early downs.
Meanwhile, facing Jaxson Dart, who is known to be more than willing to use his legs to pick up yards, Dallas seemed completely unprepared for him to take off with the ball. He would wind up as the second leading rusher for New York with 54 yards on ten carries, including a 22 yard scamper.
With Cam Skattebo as the lead dog, the Giants would run for a total of 165 yards. That kind of ball control is how you win games. Dart did not have to be dominant through the air, never playing from behind.
It all adds up to a defensive showing that would have fit in perfectly with last year’s Cowboys team. And that is frankly disturbing after all we thought we had coming.
Sean – Disappointment all around at being 0-1 on the season and 0-1 with a divisional loss that was there for the taking at that. Amazingly, you could almost make a case the Cowboys were closer to winning in Philadelphia last year then they were at New York this time around. We’ve already covered how we didn’t see any of the signs of progress we wanted yet, and in some ways there was even regression.
The preseason is over and the offense will need to start playing like it too, getting after that ever so familiar Dan Quinn defense in week two.
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