Dallas Cowboys 31 – New York Giants 7
Overview: Good teams don’t let division rivals come into their house and embarrass them 31-7 on national television. Make no mistake about it, the Giants do have talent all over their roster. But they are not playing well as a group right now. The problems they are experiencing are the same that has plagued them throughout this season: too many penalties, an inability to convert on third down, poor run blocking and running, and allowing the opposition to make big plays on offense and special teams.Some of these problems may be credited to the Giants’ youth and inexperience. But we are also starting to wonder somewhat about the coaching. Don’t get us wrong — we love this coaching staff. However, many of their game day tactics have left us scratching our heads. Part of the blame for the inordinate number of penalties must also rest with the staff — the Giants are not a very disciplined football team.
This is a big week for the Giants’ coaching staff and the players. The staff needs to get the players’ confidence back up and get them ready to rebound against the Chargers. Fassel and his staff have to quickly get this thing turned around. In fact, this may be one of Fassel’s most important weeks as coach of the Giants. For their part, each player on the team has to make a commitment to himself and the team that he will play better and do what it takes to win. Sunday’s game is critical and it is coming up fast.
Quarterbacks: Danny Kanell (25-45-228, 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions) played well, especially given the fact that he had no running game to support him and little time. From the opening play until he was taken out late in the fourth quarter, Kanell was smacked around by the blitz-happy Dallas defenders. But to his credit, Danny stood in the pocket and took his shots while attempting to deliver the ball. He’s a tough guy. He was fairly accurate with the ball except for a few throws. His 36-yard touchdown pass to Amani Toomer may have been the prettiest pass he’s thrown as a Giant. On the downside, he basically threw his deep sideline pass to David Patten up for grabs in the second quarter. He also needs to be more aggressive throwing the ball down field in certain situations and allow his receivers to make a play. We’d also like to see him take charge more in the huddle and rally his teammates. The offense at times looks lost out there — Danny must share some of that responsibility. During his time late in the game, Kent Graham looked as bad as he did all preseason.
Wide Receivers: Again, these guys were a victim of the poor pass protection as they often had little time to run their routes. Surprisingly, the Giants were somewhat successful in not only attacking Kevin Smith, but also Deion Sanders. Chris Calloway (7 catches for 77 yards) and Ike Hilliard (5 catches for 61 yards) continue to make plays in the short- to intermediate-range, but rarely make plays deeper down the field. Calloway had a drop and was lucky another wasn’t called a fumble. Ike Hilliard did a poor job securing the ball late in the game and fumbled the ball away. David Patten dropped a very catchable ball on a play that would have picked up big yardage. Amani Toomer (2-54) played his best game as a Giant. He not only got deep for the 36-yard score, but he looked good making his other catch. He also made a great catch of a ball thrown out-of-bounds despite heavy contact. Once again, Joe Jurevicius was invisible.
Tight Ends: Like we mentioned last week, the Giants can’t run the ball and Howard Cross must share some of that responsibility up front. He had one catch for eight yards. Where is Al Pupunu?
Halfbacks/Fullbacks: It is really, really tough to judge these guys given their lack of carries and the blocking up front. FB Charles Way (9 carries for 26 yards) still doesn’t look 100% to us. But he did look good on his one run up the gut behind reserve FB Greg Comella (1 carry for six yards). Amazingly, he picked up zero yards on five catches. Halfbacks Tiki Barber and Tyrone Wheatley had only three carries a piece and that makes it impossible to fairly judge a back. Tiki looked real good on the swing pass (4 catches for 23 yards) as he showed a nice burst after each catch and did a good job of picking up a couple of first downs. However, his drop of Kanell’s pass over the middle on 3rd-and-4 was huge. The Giants were trailing by 10 at that point and the pass completion would have put the ball deep into Dallas territory. The drop took a lot of wind out of the Giants’ sail.
Offensive Line: Just a horrible performance by all five starting lineman. They not only got beat mentally (two many mistakes, not enough hustle, didn’t pick up stunts and blitzes well at all), but they were beat physically too. LT Roman Oben committed two false start penalties back-to-back. Scott Gragg and Greg Bishop were also flagged with penalties. When your offense is struggling and you are playing a tough defense like Dallas, it is hard enough to convert third downs and sustain drives. But when you are constantly being backed up by silly penalties, a difficult task becomes nearly impossible. As for the physical part of the game, the pass blocking got almost as bad as the run blocking. There is no way that the Dallas front four should give New York as much trouble as it did Monday on the pass rush. Their ends are very ordinary and their tackles were playing hurt. The stunting and blitzes gave the Giants problems, but we were seeing guys get beat on one-on-one match-ups all night. That is inexcusable.
There are two areas where we have problems with the coaching. Firstly, with all the blitzes Dallas used and the line’s inability to pick them up, we would have kept FB Charles Way in the backfield to help out. But play after play, the Giants chose to play with an empty backfield in obvious pass rush situations. Secondly, it seems to us with the line struggling the way it is now in the run blocking department, we would simplify things for at least the time being. To us, it looks like the Giants are trying to get too cute with all the pulling and trapping that they are doing. On one play, Leon Lett had a free run right at Kanell as Lett just shot through the spot vacated by the pulling guard.
Finally, it’s time for these guys to start playing some inspired football. They look too passive and unemotional to us out there. They need to play with an attitude and controlled anger.
Defensive Line: Not a bad game for these guys, but certainly not the one hoped for. The line largely controlled the Dallas running game, but could not exert enough of a pass rush with its down four. The Cowboys only averaged about three yards a carry on the ground and Keith Hamilton, Robert Harris, Michael Strahan, and Chad Bratzke did a good job of occupying blockers and making plays against the run. However, there were no big plays and not enough of an impact was made against a back-up quarterback. Michael Strahan was held very quiet by Erik Williams as was Chad Bratzke against Larry Allen. For all their big talk last week, Hamilton and Harris didn’t really back it up.
Linebackers: Jessie Armstead…where are you? Jessie is as invisible on the field now as Marcus Buckley used to be. We fully realize his ankle is bothering him, but he has to start making some plays. He did an awful lot of talking on the field for someone who made two tackles. MLB Corey Widmer (five tackles) played decently, but was nowhere in sight on Sherman Williams’ touchdown gallop up the middle. SLB Ryan Phillips subbed for Marcus Buckley and played very well, considering it was his first start. He was in on four tackles and did not hurt the team.
One problem we had with the coaching is that the Giants did not seem to blitz very much, even though when they did, it seemed to work very well. We would have come after QB Jason Garrett a little more than the Giants did in an attempt to force him to make a mistake.
Defensive Backs: Everyone played decently for the most part except for FS Tito Wooten who had a terrible game. Wooten’s horrible misplay of Garrett’s 80-yard TD pass to Billy Davis was simply devastating. The Giants had just scored to tie the game; the fans were into the game; and the Cowboys were not able to pick up any yards on their first two plays. Such a misplay is a rookie-like mistake and cannot be defended in any way, shape, or form. Wooten also let Deion Sanders get behind him on Sanders’ 55-yard completion — a big no-no for a free safety. He should have known better as soon as he saw Deion in the line-up. In fact, it was because he got behind Wooten that CB Carlton Gray had to take a deeper angle on the play. Those two plays accounted for 135 yards of Dallas’ 222 yards through the air. Wooten also missed a tackle on Williams’ TD run. We thought Gray played well — especially on one play where he closed on the ball very quickly to hit the receiver. Conrad Hamilton played decently. He got beat on one deep pass, but recovered in time to luckily knock the ball away. The Cowboys were not really able to exploit him. CB Phillippi Sparks also played well. Michael Irvin got behind him on one play (a ball that fell incomplete), but Sparks did a nice job on him most of the night. We would like to see SS Sam Garnes make more plays. He was only in on two tackles while S/CB Shaun Williams was in on eight.
Special Teams: We said all along that the Giants’ special teams were going to cost them at least two games this year. Well, this is game number one. After a good start, P Brad Maynard got off a poor punt that had little hang-time. The Giants’ coverage team, which was missing Brandon Sanders and Scott Galyon, looked comical trying to tackle Deion Sanders on his 59-yard punt return. What’s worse is that we saw Percy Ellsworth really dogging it on the play — totally unacceptable. Sanders later broke another huge return in the game. Teams in the NFL cannot expect to win regularly if they are constantly being out-played and out-coached on special teams.
The good news is that the Giants looked good defending Dallas’ one kick off return (the other kick was downed in the endzone). Amani Toomer also looked sharp returning punts, despite absolutely no blocking help. Heck, on certain returns, we saw both Dallas gunners unblocked and Giant “blockers” standing around watching the play. Such poor special teams play cannot simply be the responsibility of the players, it has to be the coaching too. Special Teams Coach Larry MacDuff doesn’t seem to inspire his players.