If it makes you feel better as a fan, then by all means focus on the positives that the Giants squeezed out of Thursday night’s 20-15 loss to the Cowboys.
If it makes you sleep better as a fan, sure. Write sonnets about Daniel Jones’ mostly effective 29-for-40 passing night (which looked a lot better before he misfired on his final five attempts). Sing hymns about the defense keeping Dallas out of the end zone in the second half. Praise an offensive line that for a third straight week played with competence, a few stories north of what we’ve seen out of them the last few years.
Knock yourself out.
Or you can do what the Giants had better be doing this morning, and in the days to come before next Sunday’s game in Seattle. Because make no mistake: This was a winnable game. Forget what the oddsmakers were saying. The Cowboys came to MetLife Stadium wounded and vulnerable.
They’d gotten blasted by the Saints and outclassed by the Ravens, both of those games at home in front of fans who were ready to reach for torches and pitchforks, and an owner with an itchy trigger finger, Bill Belichick on speed dial. They couldn’t stop the run, and, in fact, the last two weeks looked like they were under the impression they were playing flag football when the other side ran the ball.
Or two-hand touch.
So the Giants, whose running game looked so promising in Cleveland last week, were going to run the ball down the Cowboys’ throats. They were going to hit them in the mouth, and keep the Dallas defense on the field, and bleed the clock, and get to 2-2 on the season.
The Giants ran the ball, all right. Twenty-four times.
They gained 26 yards.
If you don’t have a calculator handy, let me help: That’s an average of 1.08 yards per carry.
Stunning news: They did not score a touchdown. Even more stunning, they are not 2-2.
They also could not keep their arms around a Cowboys offense that looked five kinds of shaky against New Orleans and Baltimore. Dak Prescott was terrific: 22 of 27 for 221 yards and two touchdowns. Brandon Aubrey had his weekly 60-yard bomb of a field goal (though he stunned the whole stadium by missing a 51-yarder late that kept the most faithful of the faithful in their seats a few minutes longer).
“The outcome stinks,” Giants coach Brian Daboll said, “but there was improvement again. Last week, we got the result we wanted (a 21-15 win against the Browns). This week, we didn’t. We played the game the way we need to play it.”
He’s not wrong about any of that. But if the Giants really want to be judged on their record and not graded on a curve — as they weekly insist is the case — then this was as big a buzzkill as you could possibly have in the fourth week of a football season.
There was momentum behind the Browns win last week, and there was wide-scale belief that they were catching the Cowboys at the perfect time to put an end to a six-game losing streak and a stretch of 13 losses in 14 games. And look, they held the ball for 35 of the 60 minutes. Jones played well enough that his coach all but gushed about the way he played. There was some good stuff on the field Thursday night.
But the scoreboard trumped the field.
The scoreboard said Cowboys 20, Giants 15.
Make it seven in a row.
Make it 14 out of 15.
Make it 1-3.
“Give them a lot of credit, that’s a tough one,” Daboll said. “But we’ve got to do a better job than that.”
The football season is a crazy roller coaster. A week ago today, a lot of Giants fans were mostly looking ahead to the draft already. Then Sunday in Cleveland they looked as good as they’ve looked in years. Suddenly, those same fans could talk themselves into 2-2, and what that could mean for the rest of the season.
Now?
Now it’s 1-3. Now they’re staring at a four-week stretch that looks like this: at Seattle, Cincinnati and Philadelphia at home, at Pittsburgh. A season can get away from you in a hurry if you aren’t careful.
The way the Giants played in Cleveland last week put a halt to such talk, but it was only a brief reprieve. The Cowboys were begging to be taken out last night, and the game was there to be taken across all 60 minutes. For all the good stuff, that’s the biggest takeaway. As Daboll said, the outcome stinks. Even if the team didn’t.
And 1-3 is 1-3.
