Giants Take No Solace in Close Loss to Cowboys

The Giants kept it close against the Dallas Cowboys in a loss, but that was no consolation to the locker room.

Sep 26, 2024; East Rutherford, NJ, US; Dallas Cowboys cornerback Amani Oruwariye (27) intercepts a pass intended for New York Giants wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson (17) at MetLife Stadium. / Julian Leshay Guadalupe/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

A reporter tried to offer a lifeline to New York Giants defensive lineman Dexter Lawrence by asking about the moral victory the Giants experienced against the Dallas Cowboys, to whom they lost a seventh straight game by a score of 20-15 after getting blown out in two games last year by a combined 89-17.

Lawrence, however, wasn’t having any of it.

“No. I’m not getting no petty wins,” he said after the game. “Whoever won on the scoreboard, that’s the game. I don’t give a damn about a petty win. That’s football. We come here to score points to win and stop them on defense. We didn’t do that, and they beat us.”

Quarterback Daniel Jones agreed.

“No, we don’t feel good. We don’t feel good about losing,” he said. “We didn’t do enough to win and are frustrated.”

They’re both right, as a loss is a loss, whether by one point or 100 points. The loss dropped the Giants to 1-3 on an evening where they just didn’t do enough to win, the story of the last several years of this franchise’s 100-year history. 

Head coach Brian Daboll, perhaps well aware that the results were not good enough for the thousands of fans who continue to pour money into a team they hope will be competitive only to have their hearts broken, tried to offer a silver lining. 

“Again, the result stinks, but I thought there was improvement,” he said. “I think there's been continual improvement of the results. Again, last week, we got the result we wanted; this week, we didn't, which is hurtful. It hurts, it's painful, you work your butt off. 

“We had a good short week. But we played the game the way we needed to play it. Just missed out on a couple things. We’ve got to do a better job in the run game, which starts with me. But we tried a variety of things; we couldn't get much going. That's why I thought the passing game was the right way to go with it.”

While this is not to take away any credit from the Cowboys, who needed a “get-right” game of their own, all this talk about the improvement, the good week the Giants had, and so forth rings hollow, given the results.

If you can believe it, the Giants' scoring offense is currently worse than last year’s group, which saw three quarterbacks play. The Giants are averaging 15 points a game through four games, compared to last season, when they averaged 15.6 points.

Two of their three losses this season have seen them fail to reach the end zone, a pace which, if it keeps up, will see its current 50% red zone conversion rate this year (tied for 15th) challenge last year’s 44.19%, which was ranked 31st in the league.

The defense has been a little better this year now that they have a defensive coordinator who doesn’t believe in living and dying with the blitz. But figuring out how to really shore up the run defense remains an issue while the team’s CB1, Deonte Banks, continues to suffer a sophomore slump in going against the better receivers a CB1 is supposed to be able to keep up with. 

“Every loss hurts,” Lawrence said emphatically. “I’m pissed, but we just have to find a way to play better as a group. That is the biggest thing, and we must play better as a group.”

“We’re not discouraged,” Jones said. We’re still confident in our team and what we can do, but we don’t feel good about losing.

Daboll and the players can preach all they want about improvement, but unless it’s out there on the field when it counts, their definition of improvement versus what the numbers–and we’re talking the win column in practice–are just not adding up.

Run Away

The Cowboys came into this game with the 32nd-ranked run defense (185.7 yards per game) and had allowed 5.41 yards per rush attempt, also 32nd. Yet the Giants couldn’t find a way to take advantage of it despite running their heavy personnel package for most of the first half. 

“They did a couple of things when we were in certain personnel groups where they brought a weak safety and stuff like that,” Daboll said of the adjustments Dallas made to counter the Giants' mostly heavy personnel grouping.

“I thought they did a good job of either defeating blocks or slipping blocks and making tackles. We were coming into the game, and we wanted to try to establish the run game. Something that we wanted to do, and we just kept sticking them in. I think that's important to do, but we didn't get much out of it.”

Not at all. In the first half, the Giants ran the ball 16 times for 29 yards, a 1.8 yards per carry average. In the second half, it got worse: eight rushing attempts for -3 yards. Add it all up, and that comes to 26 yards on 24 carries, a dismal 1.1 yards per carry average. 

The Giants moved away from the heavy personnel packages in the second half, but by then, they had abandoned the run game in favor of the pass. Jones threw 15 passes in the first half and 25 in the second, even though the Giants were never really more than a touchdown and a two-point conversion away from tying the game. 

Not So Special Teams

The Giants' special teams seem to give us a reason to hold our collective breaths every week. 

Last week, Greg Joseph missed a 48-yard field goal that, had he made it, would have iced the game for the Giants. 

This week, the kickoff return unit was where Tyrone Tracy and Eric Gray were deployed as the returners. Gray finished with two returns for 54 yards, including one he got past the 30-yard line, and Tracy with two returns for 33 yards. But Tracy also gave everyone a scare when he fumbled the ball on the opening kickoff in the second half, a move that resulted in the coaches replacing him with Ihmir Smith-Marsette. 

Thankfully, tight end Chris Manhertz was there to recover it. The Giants marched 77 yards on 11 plays before kicker Greg Joseph hit his fourth field goal of the game, a 22-yarder that made it 14-12. 

But is it asking too much of this unit to deliver a stress-free game? 

What Happened?

Remember how Brian Daboll regularly made gutsy calls in his first season as head coach, which often worked out to the team’s advantage? 

Those days appear to be long gone, as Daboll doesn’t show that moxie as often as he did as a rookie head coach.

The latest instance came in the first series of the third quarter. The Giants began that drive on their 20-yard line and marched to the Cowboys’ 10-yard line. But instead of taking at least one shot to the end zone, the Giants kept their pass selections short.

The results were an incomplete pass to Wan’Dale Robinson on first down, followed by a Devin Singletary run for two yards on second down, and then a short pass to Robinson on third down, which picked up five of the eight yards needed.

In that situation, why not take a shot at the end zone on first down? If it goes incomplete, you still have second and third downs to move the ball.

Instead, Daboll and the offense played it safe, settling for the 22-yard field goal and not even thinking about going for it on fourth down.

“We were going to go for points on that one,” Daboll said. “It was a close game, so we didn't know what we would need at the end there. But we were going to kick it.”

He got the points he wanted, but it was not enough.

The Final Word

I realize the officials are human, but how in the world do they miss the facemask that was actually on a Dallas defender yet was called on Giants tight end Daniel Bellinger? There’s no telling if the Giants would have gotten into the end zone on that drive, but that was about as blatant as an incorrect call.

The sad thing is that while the Giants will probably send that play into the league for review and will likely get confirmation that it was a botched call and an apology, it doesn’t change the game's trajectory.

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