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The New York Giants didn’t just get their doors blown off in their 2023 season opener against the Dallas Cowboys. The entire big blue vehicle combusted and withered into ash in one of the most ridiculous, inconceivable and embarrassing displays of football from a professional squad. Daniel Jones, Saquon Barkley, Brian Daboll and company were totally obliterated.
I mean, are we sure the Giants are a professional team anymore? They should have to resubmit their credentials to the NFL after how they played against the Cowboys. Their offensive line looked overmatched on just about every play. On many of the plays where they were able to try to move the ball, they coughed it up, giving it away three times, one of which went the other way for a touchdown. Their defense made some stops but didn’t do anything super great. The night's brutality started with a catastrophic pick-six from their special teams unit.
Take just about every form of humiliation you can imagine for a football team and the Giants probably did it on Sunday Night Football. The fans who came to see them take on their nemeses witnessed the dud to end all duds in the pouring rain in the uninspiring compounds of MetLife Stadium.
Tonight the Giants:
-lost the game 40-0 (or worse)
-lost the sack battle 7-0 (or worse)
-lost the turnover battle 3-0 (or worse)
-had a FG blocked & returned for TD
-threw a pick-6No other team in NFL history has had all 5 happen in the same season (let alone all in one game).
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) September 11, 2023
The Giants didn’t mince words after the 40-0 defeat to the Cowboys, according to Dan Salomone of the Giants website. Daboll and the players owned up to the loss. At least it's a tiny consolation for fans that the team is capable of feeling the same amount of shame they did.
“We are certainly frustrated and extremely disappointed with how we performed tonight, and I know I certainly am with myself,” Jones said, per the team's website.
Jones received a four-year, $160 million deal this offseason and the majority of football fans said that he was overpaid. While it should be noted that his offensive line provided about as much support against the Cowboys' defensive line as a piece of wet cardboard, Jones did himself no favors, tossing a pair of interceptions — one of which he threw in the direction of Stephon Gilmore as he tried to just throw the ball away — and completing just 15 of his 28 pass attempts.
Barkley had a fine game, averaging 4.3 yards per rush and tallying 63 total scrimmage yards. He said afterward that his team has to get over the loss and keep their focus on the rest of the season. He said that the Giants got “skunked” and that the veterans need to “stop the bleeding and we didn't do that. We can't go down like that to a team of that caliber. Just got to go, watch film, learn from it, and get ready for Arizona,” per the team website.
The Giants have a tune-up game against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 2 before facing the San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins in consecutive weeks. Each of the non-Seahawks games will be on the road. Daboll said that New York got beat every which way. Jones said that the team has to recognize that and rebound accordingly.
“I think, for one, we've got to own it,” Jones said, via the Giants website. “Own what happened out there. We didn't play well enough. Didn't execute well enough, didn't give ourselves a chance to win the game and we got to own that, and then we got to attack the process this week of correcting it, of being critical and finding what we got to work on and making sure we are prepared and doesn't happen again. Yeah, we've got to own it and move on.”
After Week 1 of the 2023 NFL season, “big blue” refers to the gigantic feelings of disappointment and sadness that Giants fans are feeling. There is still plenty of time for New York to bounce back but it'll be hard to scrub themselves completely of the stench from this performance.
