There is a debate going on within the New York Giants fan community about whether they hate the Dallas Cowboys or the Philadelphia Eagles more:

If there is any kind of consensus, it seems from the responses to the tweet above that it’s Philly. BBV comments on the staff picks for this game are more nuanced, suggesting that the older generation hates the Cowboys more and the younger generation the Eagles. That sounds right to me. I remember the Giants’ very first game against the expansion Cowboys in 1960. They blew a 14-0 first quarter lead and let Dallas tie the game 31-31 in the final minutes on a long touchdown drive. It was the only game Dallas did not lose in their inaugural season.

The Giants have at least had a little success against the Eagles in recent years: Daniel Jones is 2-3 lifetime vs. them. Even with backup quarterbacks the Giants split with Philly last season. Dallas is a different story. Jones entered this game 1-7 vs. the Cowboys, his only win coming when Andy Dalton was at quarterback. Dallas had won 13 of their last 14 meetings, and Dak Prescott’s only losses to the Giants were in his rookie season, 2016.

Tonight seemed like a chance to finally stop the bleeding, with the Cowboys off to a rough start and Giants coming off an encouraging victory in Cleveland. It was not to be, though. What did we learn, then, from the Giants’ 20-15 loss in a game they could have won?

Daniel Jones has become an efficient quarterback…but not a good quarterback

For the second consecutive week, Jones completed a high percentage of his passes and accumulated significant yardage. Still, though, he couldn’t make explosive plays happen. Unlike last week, when he overthrew Malik Nabers several times by a lot, this week he was consistently underthrowing Nabers and Darius Slayton. There’s more than one reason why the Giants had five scoring drives and only walked away with 15 points, but Jones’ inability to connect deep with his wide receivers is a big part of the story.

Jones’s final stats looked pretty good: 29 of 40, 281 yards. If you watched the game, though, you saw a game manager who was unable to close the deal in a game the Giants could have won. A quarterback who is risk-averse most of the time and can’t hit receivers deep when he’s not. He looked pretty similar last week, but at least he managed to find Nabers in the end zone twice. It will be interesting to see how long Jones’ leash is if this continues.

The good news: The Giants have a good pass blocking offensive line

Once again, as has been the case most of this season, Jones had enough time to throw on most passing downs. Myles Garrett wreaked havoc last week with Andrew Thomas, but that was an anomaly. Tonight, DeMarcus Lawrence did sack Jones once, and Micah Parsons had at least one pressure. Overall, though, Jones had time to run a passing offense, and by now, we have to conclude that the off-season offensive line upgrade has been successful. Except for…

The bad news: The Giants have a poor run blocking offensive line

Not much attention has been paid to this, but the OL has mostly not been opening big holes for Devin Singletary and the other running backs to go through. Tonight, the Giants rushed 24 times for 26 yards against a Dallas defensive line that was considered to be very soft in the interior. In their first three games, the Cowboys gave up 94, 160, and 274 yards. You’d never have known it watching tonight’s game.

Brian Daboll obviously had a game plan to run at that defense, and it didn’t work. He seemed not to notice it, though, because he kept on dialing up the run and it kept not working. The most egregious example came in the third quarter with Dallas up 14-9. Jones hit Nabers for a 15-yard gain down to the Dallas 10. Jones was pressured by Lawrence on first down and threw it out of bounds. Then on second down, instead of taking an end zone shot, Daboll ran Singletary into the line for only 3 yards, leaving them with third-and-7. On third down, again no end zone shot, instead a short pass to Wan’Dale Robinson that only got to the 3-yard line. Fourth down at the 3? Kick another field goal.

That’s first-and-goal at the 10, and not a single attempt at the end zone. Maybe Jones didn’t see an open receiver or maybe the coverage was just good. But you have to try to score a TD.

Without blitzing, the Giants’ pass rush is pretty impotent

Shane Bowen blitzed a lot less in this game than he did against Cleveland last week, and with good reason. Prescott is good against the blitz. Unfortunately, with only four rushing most of the time, the pass rush did little. Dexter Lawrence had a quiet game. Brian Burns did virtually nothing except making a nice tackle for a three-yard loss on one running play. Kayvon Thibodeaux managed one sack of Prescott (the first Giant to sack him since 2021).

Overall, the defense played fairly well against the Cowboys’ passing game except for another Tae Banks failure to prevent CeeDee Lamb from catching an in route and then taking it the distance for a touchdown. (Tyler Nubin helped by taking an awful angle on Lamb and being completely out of position to limit the damage after Lamb caught the ball.)

NFL officiating is awful

It probably wouldn’t have mattered the way the Giants’ offense played most of the evening, but on the Giants’ first possession of the game, Jones hit a wide-open Malik Nabers, who had made a filthy double move to leave defensive back Andrew Booth in the dust, for 39 yards into Dallas territory. Then on second down, a 5-yard Jones keeper was nullified by a face mask call on Daniel Bellinger. The film showed that actually Bellinger had his face mask pulled by the Dallas defender, but there was no booth review. The Giants couldn’t overcome the 15-yard penalty and had to settle for a 52-yard Greg Joseph field goal for a 3-0 lead.

On the next drive, two different officials threw flags on a 15 yard Prescott to Rico Dowdle touchdown pass, but both officials picked up the flags after conferring. Where was the conferring on the Bellinger face mask?