Giants-Cowboys ‘things I think’: Missed opportunity shows Giants aren’t quite there yet

This was a game that was there for the Giants — they just couldn’t take it

The Dallas Cowboys, the team the New York Giants can’t ever seem to get past, were there for the taking Thursday night at MetLife Stadium. The Giants just weren’t quite good enough to get the job done, falling 20-15.

And the Giants weren’t happy about falling short. They didn’t want to hear about Thursday’s highly-competitive game being a far better effort than the 40-0 and 49-17 beat downs they took from the Cowboys a year ago.

“I’m not here for no petty wins,” said star defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence. “It’s whoever wins on the scoreboard. That’s the game. I don’t give a damn about a petty win. It’s football. We go out here to score points and to win. And stop them on defense. We didn’t do that, and they beat us.”

“There ain’t nothing to feel good about in a loss,” said wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson. “Losing sucks, period.

“Last year’s a whole different team than this year, so we weren’t worried about last year, what that was. We knew what we were capable of and it’s gotta be better. We gotta come out next week and next Sunday and show that we can go out there and win.”

The Giants could have won Thursday night. Maybe even should have.

They did surrender a 55-yard touchdown pass to CeeDee Lamb, who ended up with seven catches for 98 yards. Dak Prescott did complete 22 of 27 passes for 221 yards and two touchdowns.

Still, the Giants gave up only 20 points and were in the game throughout. They just could not maximize their opportunities.

The Giants had four drives of 10 plays or more, and a fifth drive of eight plays. They could not punch in a touchdown on any of them.

At least placekicker Greg Joseph rebounded from an ugly miss in his first game as a Giant on Sunday to kick five field goals, giving the Giants points on each of those drives. Still, the lack of touchdowns did them in.

Was the lack of scoring, the second time in four games the Giants have not scored a touchdown, because of quarterback Daniel Jones’ inability to hit on vertical pass attempts?

That was, and is, part of the problem. Even the 39-yard pass to Malik Nabers early in the game probably could have been a bigger play if the rookie wide receiver hadn’t had to wait on the ball.

Jones finished a solid 29 of 40 (72.5% completion rate) for 281 yards and an interception on a late desperation throw in the closing seconds. He underthrew a handful of deep balls, though, in particularly one to Darius Slayton on a free play because of a Dallas offsides penalty. That could have been a touchdown, but was instead intercepted (though the interception didn’t count).

“You’d like to hit them,” said head coach Brian Daboll. “We missed that one, I know that. Again, I thought the quarterback (Daniel Jones) played well.

Daboll praised the way Jones has been playing.

“Three games in a row, I’m proud of the young man. He’s made good decisions. He’s thrown the ball where he needs to throw the ball,” Daboll said. “The last play to (wide receiver Jalin) Hyatt, that’s a heave it down there and see if we get a DPI (defensive pass interference) or we can go up and try to make a play. But he’s, I thought, for three games he’s been locked in. He’s played well. He’s seeing the field. He’s delivered the ball where he needs to. Again, we had some opportunities to continue drives today, as well. I’m proud of how he’s performed, how he’s prepared. He’s done a nice job for us.”

Robinson also tried to take the quarterback off the hook.

“I think some of the explosives could have came from just us making some plays on the outside and not having some drops,” Robinson said. “I don’t think we would have been talking about that if, like I said, if we would have made those plays. I know for myself especially.”

Still, the inability to hit the deeper plays is an issue. The Giants had only two plays in the game longer than 20 yards.

The Giants were, in a way, playing offense by inches. When you do that, you have to be perfect, or nearly perfect.

The Giants weren’t.

Robinson dropped a pass in the red zone

“Personally I had that drop in the red zone, in the corner. So I know that one was on me,” Robinson said. “I definitely think it should have been a touchdown.”

Robinson also got tackled at the 3-yard line on a play where it looked like he had an opportunity to score. That created a fourth-and-3 where Daboll chose field goal with the Giants trailing 14-9 rather than going for the touchdown.

In the second quarter, Jones missed a deep shot to Tyrone Tracy from the Dallas 26-yard line. The Giants were penalized for an illegal shift on the play, anyway.

In the fourth quarter, a Chris Manhertz holding penalty on second-and-2 at the Dallas 44-yard line interrupted another drive that ended with a field goal rather than a touchdown.

“We made a lot of mistakes today, whether that was in our blocking schemes, or we could get down deep in their territory and get a holding call, or some other kind of penalty, and kind of just shooting ourselves in the foot,” said guard Jon Runyan. “It was tough, those kind of things.

“To get down in the red zone, you have to score touchdowns, so you can’t be setting up for field goals, and that’s something that hurt us.”

The officials didn’t help the Giants. In the first quarter, tight end Daniel Bellinger was called for a face mask penalty when it was his face mask that got pulled. The Giants should have had a first down in the red zone. Instead, they were pushed back to their own 46-yard line and ended up needing a 52-yard Joseph field goal to get points.

The Giants also did not help themselves by failing to take advantage of a weak Dallas run defense. The Cowboys entered the game giving up a league-worst 5.4 yards per rushing attempt. The Giants ran for only 26 yards on 24 carries, 1.1 yards per rushing attempt.

“Definitely got to be better in the run game. I felt like we just weren’t really at times blocking the right people in some plays, and it kind of came back and bit us in the butt at the end,” Runyan said. “We weren’t able to really move the ball efficiently in the run game, and that’s the kind of thing we wanted to do going into this game really well.

“I feel like they (the Cowboys) changed the style of their defense, kind of how they fit things a little differently in previous games. They were getting gashed in the run game early in the season, and they fixed that this game, and we thought we were going to take advantage of it.”

Coming off a win against Cleveland that gave them optimism after an 0-2 start, the Giants thought Thursday could be a night where they shed some demons and showed a national prime time audience they could be a relevant.

The Giants still want to believe that the past three weeks, which featured two close losses and a win over Cleveland, hint at their potential.

“Hell, yeah,” said offensive tackle Jermaine Eluemunor when asked if he remained optimistic.

“We were in every game other than Minnesota. In Minnesota we killed ourselves,” Eluemunor said. “This is a really good team. We’re a really good team at 1-3 and by the end of the year our record will reflect that.”

Maybe. What Thursday really showed, though, is how small the Giants’ margin for error really is.

They play hard. They care. They do plenty of good things. They just haven’t done quite enough.

Maybe they are inching closer to being a good team. Closer, though, isn’t close enough.