Tag: Dallas Cowboys vs New York Giants

What We Learned vs Giants: Cowboys’ defense can be star in the show, too,

The defense can step up when needed, and it takes much more than a talented back to have this level of rushing success. Here’s what we learned in the Cowboys’ dismantling of the Giants on Sunday. | From @CDPiglet

The Dallas Cowboys improved to 4-1 overall, and 2-0 in the division with their 44-20 win over the New York Giants on Sunday. They beat up on another weak NFC East opponent, running their combined score this season against them to 85 to 41, +44. Quarterback Dak Prescott’s record against the NFC East improves to 21-6 and they now have a two-game lead in the division.

The game was a little bit of a let down, due to the amount of important players injured on the Giants team, but nobody cried for the Cowboys last year when they lost their quarterback and two starting offensive tackles. Dallas handled their business, winning all three games of their home stand in a stretch where home-field advantage means next to nothing around the NFL.

Maybe some believe that it’s impossible to learn anything from beating an injury-riddled team, but they definitely can, and here are some examples of what was learned this week.

Week 5 Report Card and Snap Counts: Cowboys shake cobwebs to dominate Giants

Things started slowly, but each position group brought something to the table against the division rivals. Here’s who played how much and how well. | From @Zeke_Barrera

The Dallas Cowboys managed to move to 4-1 on the 2021 season, defeating a New York Giants team running on fumes after losing multiple key offensive players to violent and gruesome injuries. Dallas nonetheless poured it on, outscoring the Giants 27-10 in the second half to take a two-game lead in the NFC East.

It was a familiar path to victory for Dallas, who’s offense shows no signs of slowing down while the defense continues to generate turnovers at just the right time. It’s a recipe the Cowboys should hope to replicate many times throughout the year on the way towards a deep playoff run.

Here’s how the Cowboys graded out in Week 5, along with the playtime percentage breakdown.

Cowboys’ Elliott explains brief scare from pylon hit: ‘Maybe they should find a new spot for it’

He tallied 112 yards from scrimmage and scored two TDs, but the hardest hit Ezekiel Elliott took Sunday was from a piece of field equipment. | From @ToddBrock24f7

In a game that was largely sold as the anniversary of a devastating injury and saw multiple Giants players lost over the course of four quarters in Arlington, Cowboys fans found their hearts lodged firmly in their throats once again when one of their superstars was sprawled out in pain on the AT&T Stadium turf.

The moment came roughly halfway through the third quarter at the end of a seven-yard run. Elliott was pushed out of bounds and landed on the line-to-gain pylon. But then he didn’t get up.

The two-time rushing champ limped away, wincing and reaching for his back. Thankfully, though, his absence was short-lived. Three plays later, Elliott’s 4-yard touchdown catch extended the Dallas lead to 24-13.

As if to prove he was fine, Elliott went into the end zone with demonstrable style.

“I think it was the high-stepping, right? He was high-stepping in on that one,” quarterback Dak Prescott emphasized. “Just a tough guy. I’ve said time and time again, he’s going to do whatever it takes for this offense to be successful for this team to win. And right there, obviously being in some pain, making sure he was okay, and once he realized he was fine, he’s going to put himself back in there to try and get a touchdown, to try to help this team whether it’s his ball or not. It just ended up going to him on that play. He’s just a special player, and he means a lot to this offense as a leader and obviously just as a runner.”

After the 44-20 victory, Elliott explained the freak (and luckily minor) injury.

“Yeah, I fell on the pylon. That thing is kind of hard. Maybe they should find a new spot for it,” he laughed to reporters following the win. “I think it is foamy, but it’s hard. It’s hard. The bottom- the base of it- is hard, too. No, it’s definitely not soft.”

The ubiquitous orange pylons may look like they’re made out of Nerf material, but thanks to the expensive camera gear now housed inside for TV purposes, they’re surprisingly hard. And it hurt to land on top of one, Elliott said.

“It did! Yeah, it definitely hurt. Normally, I get up and at least get off the field. But right there, I had to chill out a little bit. It kind of just stabbed me. Lost my wind.”

It was one of the few setbacks the Cowboys’ run game encountered on Sunday. Elliott and backfieldmate Tony Pollard combined for 185 ground yards. Add in a few runs by Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and Cedrick Wilson, and the team rolled to 201 rushing yards.

The effort was even more impressive given that the Cowboys felt their rivals in blue had set out to specifically stop the rushing attack.

“They came with a pretty heavy run defense emphasis today,” head coach Mike McCarthy explained in his postgame press conference. “When you run the ball and you’re in a run/pass mode, that’s one way. But when you run the ball and they know you’re going to run it, and you have success, that’s what we’re looking for. I really like the fact we ran into some tilted defenses and ran it well, ran it physical. I just think it speaks to the confidence of the run-blocking unit as a whole, and to the running of both Zeke and Tony. We need to continue to go that way. As much as we can play run-to-pass, I don’t know exactly what the numbers were, but I know we were over 300 and over 100-plus rushing, so those are good numbers.”

Actually, it was two hundred-plus yards on the ground, and over three hundred in the air. Those are very good numbers indeed. Sunday marked the first time the Cowboys have reached both plateaus in the same game since 1983.

Looking just at the box score, then, it might be surprising to learn that Elliott and the Cowboys weren’t even particularly pleased with their overall level of play.

“Yeah, we didn’t play that well,” Elliott said. “We had some turnovers early. We turned the ball over in the red zone; that can’t happen at all. We got the job done, but we’ve definitely got to focus on playing a complete game. I said last week that’s our next step as a team: playing a complete game and dominating a team from the first to the fourth quarter. So we’ve got some work to do.”

Fortunately for Dallas, that work will include a full-strength Elliott, even after his close encounter with a shockingly stout piece of field equipment.

He said after the game that his back was still smarting from the blow.

“Oh no, I feel it.”

Dinged or not, the league’s third-highest-ranked rusher is expected to be ready to take on the Patriots in Foxborough next Sunday, says McCarthy.

“I don’t have any high concern for Zeke or any of our guys right now.”

Elliott famously spent his offseason juking trash cans during private summer workouts. But suddenly, the team might need to add pylon-dodging to its list of drills for the upcoming week of practice.

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Dak Prescott leads Cowboys rout, exorcises injury demons: ‘The final shovel in burying this thing’

The QB admitted that the injury from 364 days prior crept into his mind, but a 44-20 win “was the final shovel in burying this thing.” | From @ToddBrock24f7

It was always going to come back. Maybe part of it is this time of year, when haunted houses and zombies creep into the collective consciousness for a little while. But even though Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott had insisted for months that he had put his 2020 injury well behind him, moved on completely, “buried it,” to use his exact phrase, everyone knew it was going to come back to life in some way this week.

Of course, the media led the resurrection effort, hooking up jumper cables, Dr. Frankenstein-style, in the days of hype leading up to the Week 5 game. The story was too good to pass up: the Giants once again, back at AT&T Stadium, one day shy of the one-year anniversary of the star quarterback’s leg snapping on live TV. And even though Prescott had tried to maintain that he hadn’t given much thought to that eerie sense of deja vu, he admitted after the team’s 44-20 blowout win that the ghosts briefly reappeared.

“I think I have,” Prescott told reporters afterward when asked if he had reflected on his journey since the gruesome season-ending leg injury he suffered on October 11 of last year. “During this week, as much as I have tried to put it off, as much as I’ve tried to not think about it, I think it just naturally does. It’s in the back of your head, unconsciously or not.”

The afternoon got off to a scary start for Prescott, who had a pass tipped and intercepted on the Cowboys’ very first possession. Later in the quarter, a shotgun snap got away from him and was recovered by New York just as the team seemed poised to score their first touchdown of the contest.

“Kind of rushed the whole snap-to-handoff mechanics and threw the ball away right there, and just definitely can’t do that. Especially not in the red zone. That’s just situational; it’s not good any time, but down there when you’re guaranteed some points, that’s a big swing.”

And that’s when the ghosts really started rattling their chains.

On the Giants’ next play, running back Saquon Barkley rolled an ankle. For the second straight year, a hush fell over the Giants-Cowboys meeting as a superstar lay on the turf in Arlington. Barkley ended up being carted into the tunnel, just as Prescott had been 364 days earlier.

“When I saw the cart, it definitely came in my head. ‘Get that thing out of here.’ But flipped the page quick; I’ve got a short memory. I thought about it for that moment,” Prescott said, also noting the injury suffered later by Giants passer Daniel Jones that required him to be driven off the field as well. “My thoughts went for him. Hope he’s okay, hope that Saquon, hope that all of those guys [are okay]. You never want to see anybody get hurt. It’s a physical game, and we know this game can take a toll on your body, but you never want to see anybody get taken out where they can’t come back in… But it was about turning the page and staying focused on what my job was.”

It didn’t take long. On the next offensive series, Prescott hooked up with wideout CeeDee Lamb for a 49-yard touchdown reception. He would add another scoring strike to Amari Cooper just before halftime. And then another to running back Ezekiel Elliott with the first drive of the third quarter. Prescott would end up going 22-of-32 for 302 passing yards and those three touchdowns in the rout, tallying a quarterback rating of 116.9.

And it all started with that deep ball to Lamb.

“Once I actually had that touchdown to CeeDee was kind of when I started rolling and got into the groove,” Prescott said.

The day may have gotten off to a dicey start, but head coach Mike McCarthy was confident that Prescott would exorcise any demons that last season’s memories tried to dredge up during this year’s rematch.

“Never blinked,” McCarthy said of his quarterback during his postgame press conference. “He’s so dang focused in everything he does. His disposition never changes, his attitude, his energy. I think that clearly was evident in how he finished the game, the numbers that he put up. I thought he played very well, particularly after those two giveaways.”

But quickly getting over an unfortunate moment is becoming one of Prescott’s calling cards. Perhaps even more so than the accuracy, the gaudy statistics, the unwavering leadership, the unquestionable grit and toughness, Prescott’s knack for bouncing back from adversity may well be his greatest trait of all.

“The past is the past,” Prescott said to start his postgame address. “I think it’s about living in the present, not getting too infatuated with the future, either. Just living in this moment, enjoying this win here. And we’ll turn the page tomorrow and focus on the New England Patriots. It’s about the growth.”

And it’s the growth that Prescott zeroes in on when he talks about the last 365 days. Not content with just a comeback to the level he was at when he went down, Prescott is most proud now of going beyond.

“The way that I’ve grown,” he explained. “Honestly, my growth. Personally, just off the field and on the field. I learned a lot about myself, tested myself. I think everything I do now is very intentional and purposeful to what I want and what I want to accomplish. Just to be able to do that, and to know that everything that you’re taking in is for the good, and you’re trying to exert that as well: exert nothing but good energy and positive energy and support. I’m blessed, and anything that I go through, I’m thankful for, because I usually come out a better person, as I did this.”

All indications are that Prescott is better than he was 365 days ago. And not just as an elite NFL quarterback, although that alone would be an impressive feat. He’s stared down every ghost that’s arisen since his home stadium turned into a personal house of horror last October. Now that injury can finally be laid to rest for good, never to see the light of day again.

“I said that in the locker room. I hugged [Cowboys director of rehabilitation] Britt Brown right there at the end and he said, ‘I know what this meant.’ I told him thank you and I said, ‘I’m glad it’s behind us.’ I said, ‘I don’t know why I was in a slow mental fog I felt early. But when it passed…’ Yeah, I’m glad it’s over with it, and I’m glad I’m past that, and I think this was the final shovel in burying this thing.”

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The Good, Bad and Ugly: Cowboys overcome slow start as stars outshine Giants, 44-20

While the Cowboys ended up cruising thanks to their offensive prowess, the pass defense was once again thwarted by a menacing opponent. A look at what went right, wrong and sideways in Week 5. | From @BenGrimaldi

The Dallas Cowboys won their fourth game in a row Sunday, beating the rival New York Giants, 44-20. For the second consecutive week, the Cowboys pulled away thanks to a second-half scoring barrage to make it look easy on the scoreboard, but it was one of the strangest games the teams have played lately.

Injuries relegated the Giants to mostly second-stringers on offense, but the Cowboys responded with some sloppy play. Dallas got the win in some of the same ways they’ve been successful on the season.

Here’s the good, the bad and the ugly in a Week 5 victory for the now 4-1 Cowboys.

Cowboys’ Elliott rumbles his way to Player of the Game honors in Week 5

The Cowboys’ running back is back to running away from defensive linemen on a regular basis. Another big day for the always hungry Elliott.| From @TimLettiero

In yet another dominant second-half performance, the Dallas Cowboys were finally able to kick the visiting New York Giants out of their house after letting them hang around for two quarters. The club once again was able to run over, around and through an opponent, as Dallas ran for over 200 rushing yards for the second consecutive game. The attack started on the ground and ended on the ground and over the course of the game Dallas dealt body blow after body blow en route to a 44-20 division victory.

The Giants were daring the Cowboys to run early on, keeping their coverage players back as they feared another game with quarterback Dak Prescott carving them up. That happened anyway, but only after Ezekiel Elliott, the Cowboys offensive line and Kellen Moore forced them to respect the league’s best running game. Elliott led the way again, running the rock 21 times while catching two balls for a total of 112 yards from scrimmage and a pair of scores.

Early on, Elliott was used as a workhorse. The key factor to head coach Mike McCarthy’s “run until they stop it” motto this week, Elliott gained chunk plays here and there while also being a factor in the passing game, although his most impressive catch along the sideline got called back for an offensive penalty. Elliott stretched out to haul in a sideline pass for a first down, but an illegal shift call negated the gain.

In the game’s first half, Elliott was the central point of the offense, gaining 71 yards on 12 rushes while the passing game was working on getting untracked.

One of Elliott’s best traits is his pass blocking ability. It often gets overlooked but he shows it here as he helps Prescott find CeeDee Lamb for the first touchdown of the game.

In the second half, Moore dipped into his bag of tricks. On this fake option play, Elliott is left wide open for the swing pass. Paying homage to his jersey-number twin Deion Sanders, Elliott high-stepped his way into the end zone.

Prior to the play, Elliott broke off a big run that saw him launch toward the first-down marker, landing awkwardly on his back. There was concern as he had to be tended to on the sideline, but a few plays later he was back in the game.

Later in the game, Elliott trusted his speed and patiently waited for blocks to develop as he bursts outside, getting into the end zones virtually untouched to ice the game.

Elliott continues to be on fire early in the young season, continuing to silence doubters who had grown loud over the last couple seasons.

He’s now up to over 450 yards on the ground through five games, on pace for over 1,500 yards in the new 17-game season. Continuing to find consistency the Dallas Cowboys and Elliot will look to keep rolling next week in Foxborough, Massachusetts when they take on Bill Belicheck’s New England Patriots.

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WATCH: Anthony Brown ices Cowboys’ Week 5 win with Pick 6

Mike Glennon threw a second interception, this time it was to Anthony Brown for a game-icing pick-six.

Cornerback Anthony Brown has joined the fun in the final moments. After cornerback Trevon Diggs got his sixth interception earlier in the game, Brown broke on a late pass by quarterback Mike Glennon and took it back to the house for a pick-six. This is also Brown’s second interception of the season.

Dallas had a weird first half but came out and took it to the heavily-injured Giants in the second half, scoring 27 points with Brown’s score as the icing on the cake for the Cowboys who walk away with a 44-20 divisional win.

WATCH: Cowboys’ Elliott closes the door on Giants with second TD

Ezekiel Elliott rushed for his second touchdown of the game, putting the lead likely out of reach for the Giants in the fourth quarter.

With 12:26 left in the game, the Giants had a 4th-and-goal from the 2-yard line. New York wide receiver Kadarius Toney slipped and the pass was incomplete, setting up the Dallas offense deep in their own territory.

Continuing his impressive day, running back Ezekiel Elliott gave Dallas space with an immediate 10-yard gain. The drive gained momentum with a 22-yard pass by wide receiver Cedrick Wilson, who would’ve had his second career passing touchdown if he led wide receiver Noah Brown downfield.

The run game continued to churn into Giants territory and Elliott capped off the drive with a 13-yard touchdown scamper for his second score of the game. The touchdown put the game out of reach for New York, extending the lead to 34-13.

Game Recap: Cowboys win 4th straight as Elliott, defense pummel Giants 44-20

The Cowboys improve to 4-1 as they overcame a sloppy start to exert their dominance over the injured and less talented Giants on Sunday. Here’s everything we know. | From @KDDrummondNFL

The Dallas Cowboys entered Sunday’s contest with a chance to create some distance between themselves and their division rivals. Facing off against the one-win Giants, the team also got a boost from the early game as the Washington Football Team fell to the New Orleans Saints. A victory in the early evening would give Dallas a two-game division lead over them and the Philadelphia Eagles, who Dallas defeated two weeks prior. It wasn’t a pretty effort overall, but there were enough attractive plays to piece together a double-digit victory.

Quarterback Dak Prescott overcame two first-half turnovers, one right near the Giants goal line, to lead Dallas to three scoring drives in four possessions surrounding halftime. Dallas’ defense was able to corral a Giants’ team that suffered numerous in-game injuries and when the dust settled, the Cowboys won their fourth game in a row, 44-20.

The Cowboys are now +53 scoring on the season.

Kellen Moore’s offense once again rolled, compiling 515 yards of total offense. Dan Quinn’s defense, not to be outdone, scored once again and record two turnovers for their fifth-straight game in 2021. The Dallas defense has a streak of 9 straight going back to last season, the longest streak in the league since 2010.

Trevon Diggs came through with the first, then late in the fourth quarter Anthony Brown sealed the game with a Pick-6 of backup Mike Glennon.

Dallas was committed to the run once again, striking in the passing game when necessary but deciding that bludgeoning the Giants’ defense into submission was the best plan for the day. For the fourth-straight game Dallas gained over 150 yards on the ground, this time 201, as Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard once again looked like an unstoppable storm of crackling thunder and electric lightning.

Elliott finished with 112 total yards and two scores.

His star-RB counterpart Saquon Barkley didn’t finish the game as he was one of several New York offensive starters who left with injury. Barkley stepped on Jourdan Lewis’ foot and rolled his ankle. Later, QB Daniel Jones suffered a concussion on a run and he and WR Kenny Golladay (knee) sat out the second half as well.

Things didn’t start smoothly for the Cowboys, as their opening drive ended at midfield with a fourth-and-two tipped interception at the line. Two drives later, a snap to Prescott’s left side was fumbled, ending a great scoring opportunity.

Through it all, though, the Cowboys’ defense held tight. They kept the Giants’ offense muffled while the offense sorted out there issues and by halftime Dallas was leading by seven points. The second half was pure domination as Dallas dominated their third-straight opponent to improve to 4-1 on the season.

Leading Passer: Dak Prescott 22 for 32, 302 yards, 3 passing TDs, 1 INT
Leading Rusher: Ezekiel Elliott 21 rushes, 110 yards 1 TD, 2 recs 1 TD
Leading Receiver: CeeDee Lamb 4 receptions, 84 yards 1 TD
Leading Defender: Micah Parsons 8 tackles, 3 QB hits

Next Game: 10/17 – 3:25 p.m. Central @ New England Patriots

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WATCH: Cowboys CB Trevon Diggs grabs INT for fifth straight game

Trevon Diggs extended his interception streak to five, picking off Mike Glennon on a deep throw for his fifth takeaway of the season.

This is a weekly post now. Second-year cornerback Trevon Diggs has stretched his magical interception streak to five games in 2021. Diggs read Giants quarterback Mike Glennon the whole way, letting the receiver appear open so he could do his best Deion Sanders impression and fly back into the play for the interception.

That’s now an unheard-of six interceptions in five games for Diggs who has propelled himself as the frontrunner for Defensive Player of the Year. After the takeaway, the Dallas offense reached the New York 24-yard line before a sack of quarterback Dak Prescott stifled the drive and kicker Greg Zuerlein made a 38-yard field go to extend the lead to 27-13 late in the third quarter.