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Jordan Raanan, ESPN Staff Writer
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The New York Giants lost 40-0 at home to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night. It was their worst season-opening loss in franchise history, even worse than the 35-0 drubbing to these same Cowboys in 1995.
Embarrassing is one way to describe this latest demolition, especially with the Giants coming off a promising season in which they made the playoffs and won a postseason game in their first year under coach Brian Daboll and general manager Joe Schoen. But these Giants, despite their offseason additions, had a field goal blocked for a touchdown and an interception returned for a touchdown, allowed seven sacks, threw a pair of interceptions and lost a fumble.
And those were only some of the myriad miscues.
“It’s embarrassing, but it’s over with now. We have to put that one to rest,” safety Xavier McKinney said. “It happened. So obviously you have to embrace it a little bit. You have to understand, ‘Where do you go from here?’ That’s what it is for us now. We’re going to keep chopping, keep climbing. Be all right.”
The Cowboys and Giants have met 122 times in their history. Only one other time was the margin of victory greater than 40 — a 45-point Cowboys victory on Sept. 18, 1966. That one was 52-7.
The way Daboll described Sunday’s season-opening loss was that his team got “skunked here 40-0.”
The Giants were booed by the home crowd as they went to the locker room down 26-0 at the half.
“Yeah, we weren’t playing well,” Daboll said.
The Cowboys have now won 12 of their past 13 games against the Giants and 11 straight when they’ve had quarterback Dak Prescott under center.
The Cowboys didn’t even need Prescott to throw a touchdown pass Sunday night to win by 40. He went 13-of-24 passing for 143 yards with no touchdowns or interceptions in the rout.
It only enhanced the belief that the gap between the Cowboys and Giants remained massive.
New York was hoping to compete with the Cowboys and rival Philadelphia Eagles this season. This kind of result will damper any belief that it can, at least for the time being.
But the Giants know they’ll get another shot at the Cowboys.
“Yeah, that’s what the reaction is going to be. Like I said, it’s a long season,” said Giants running back Saquon Barkley, who finished with just 63 total yards. “I’m not too focused on the Eagles. I’m really focused more on (next week’s opponent) Arizona, and the beauty is we get to see Dallas again. We have to go there in a tough environment. I’m not really worried about that gap. They got us. They came in and got the better of us. Made more plays. We didn’t execute and now we get ready for Arizona.”
It’s only Week 1, but the result against Dallas was alarming. It’s not often a team gets shutout like that at home. Or anytime.
This was the largest shutout victory in the long, storied history of the Cowboys.
“This was a wake-up call for us. It was definitely humbling,” McKinney said. “We’ll figure it out. We’re a team built off adversity. We’ve been through a lot of things throughout the last couple years. We’ll figure it out and get back to the drawing board and see what we can do to get the next one.”
They might not have played well, but Daboll thought it was merely a lack of execution, not a lack of effort.
He said he didn’t see any quit from the Giants.
“Those guys are competitors. Obviously the result didn’t show tonight. But (quitting), that’s not us. That’s not us to insinuate that someone’s not giving effort,” he said. “Everyone gives balls-out effort. Just didn’t do a good enough job to execute. I don’t question that. Not ever.”
