New York Giants Report Card: Not Good Enough

Here are our grades for the New York Giants’ 20-15 loss to the Dallas Cowboys.

Offense

We’ll forgive tight end Daniel Bellinger, the victim of a phantom face mask call that forced the Giants to settle for the first of five field goals on the evening. But what on earth happened to the running game? The Giants, against the 32nd-ranked rushing defense, ran the ball 24 times and managed only 26 yards, 24 of them by Devin Singletary. That’s a 1.1 yards per carry average, which, to put it bluntly, is pathetic. 

Daniel Jones finished 29 of 40 (72.5%) for 281 yards and an 81.4 passer rating. Mostly, he played well enough to win, though he remained off-target with most of his deeper throws. Wan’Dale Robinson could not come up with a big third-down play on the Giants’ final drive that might have enabled them to add to their point total, and Darius Slayton, bad thumb and all, also had a drop. The Giants outgained the Cowboys (barely), but it did them no good in the 

Grade: C-

Defense

Other than Deonte Banks’s gaffe against CeeDee Lamb, which resulted in a 55-yard touchdown, the defense played well enough to keep the Giants in the game. Outside linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux came up with the Giants’ first sack of Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott since 2021, and both safety Tyler Nubin and linebacker Micah McFadden finished with eight sacks for the team lead. 

The run defense held a Dallas running game that was struggling, coming into this week’s game, to just 80 yards. Prescott finished having completed 81.5% of his pass attempts as the defense managed just three hits on him all game long.

Grade: C

Special Teams

Greg Joseph was perfect on the evening, but the Giants better come up with a solution at kickoff returner because right now, neither Eric Gray nor Tyrone Tracy, the latter of whom had a fumble on a kickoff return that was fortunately recovered by tight end Chris Manhertz, are getting it done. 

Punt returner Ihmir Smith-Marsette looked promising on his lone punt return, which went for 22 yards, and Jamie Gillan’s lone punt was placed inside the 20-yard line.

Grade: B

Coaching

The Giants will never admit who was at fault, but it’s maddening that they took zero shots to the end zone once they were in the red zone. This conservatism is just killing this team’s chances at scoring, as they’re averaging 15 points per game–0.6 points less than what they finished with last year. New York has now gone two games, Minnesota and this one, in which they have failed to get into the end zone, both losses.

Daboll decided not to go for it on fourth down after Wan’Dale Robinson caught a pass that put the ball at the 3-yard line in the third quarter because, given how close the game was at the time, he wanted the points.  The field goal made it a two-point game, but the Giants never quite caught up to the Cowboys in the point column.

Grade: D