Back to the Drawing Board
Man, did that game stink. The Giants were flat out beaten by the Cowboys. Hurts to say so, but Dallas fielded the better team Sunday.
Those two holding calls (Boss & Snee) in the 4th were painful, especially the hold by Boss since it had no affect on the outcome of the play, gotta be smarter than that. Let’s not even talk about the clock management issue, what the hell was that about, when did Manning turn into Herm Edwards!?
Putting aside those stupid plays, I still hang this loss on the Defense, just like the first game we couldn’t stop the Cowboys offense when needed. Blown assignments, poor coverage and NO pass rush. The problems with the secondary are a given. All Giants fans I believe have accepted the fact that our secondary is mediocre; however during the 6 game winning streak we put plenty of pressure on the opposing QB’s to help mask this deficiency. As we saw on Sunday when we cannot get pressure on the QB it turns into a long day for our secondary. Hats off to the Cowboys O-line we brought blitzes from every angle yet they still successfully picked them up, Jason Garrett had his team well prepared.
I know there will be a lot of talk about if the Giants didn’t have those boneheaded penalties in the 4th qtr then they would have tied the game 24-24 and it would have been a completely different game. But honestly would it have really? I saw no evidence that the Giants D would all of a sudden turn it around and stone the Cowboys O. The Cowboys offense moved with great ease, but the Giants O? It felt like a struggle all game long to pickup first downs.
The Giants do have the talent to beat the Cowboys and we just may do so if we meet them in the playoffs, but we have to come up with a much better defensive strategy, we need to put pressure on Romo and on the Offensive side of the ball we need to play smash mouth football, eat up the game clock and keep the Cowboys offense off the field, too many times we got away from the run, the Giants, when we are going right, are a run first team…establish the run to setup the play action pass.
It was a disappointing game but lets not panic just yet, lets wait and see how are boys respond next week against a wounded Lions team; 7-3 that doesn’t sound too bad to me at all.
