Was that the worst-case scenario? Because it feels like you couldn't have scripted a worse way for the Dallas Cowboys' season to start than getting punked by the New York Giants, a team Dallas has owned for a decade, with the entire country watching.
At least we can take solace in the fact that the game is over. The Cowboys started their season with a 28-20 loss at MetLife Stadium, and the final score doesn't begin to paint a full picture of how much John Harbaugh's Giants outclassed Brian Schottenheimer's squad.
Dallas was sloppy from start to finish. The offense didn't find a rhythm until it was too late, and Matt Eberflus' defe... -- sorry, Christian Parker's defense -- got absolutely worked. Let's get into the biggest takeaways from an ugly display of Cowboys football.
5 instant takeaways from Cowboys' Week 1 loss to the Giants
Christian Parker turns in a dud for the ages
The general hope was that Dallas' new-look defense would start out slow and pick up steam by the middle of the season as it got more comfortable in Parker's scheme and playing with each other. There's a lot of new faces out there. Sunday night made it clear that the Cowboys' defensive improvements were greatly exaggerated.
You have to give credit to Jaxson Dart. He was in complete command of the offense, and his process all night was on point. But Dallas made life way too easy for him.
The Giants spammed three straight crossing routes before their touchdown to end the first half, and they repeatedly dumped the ball to Devin Singletary in the flat on the gut-punch drive that made it 28-14 midway through the fourth quarter.
Consider the Christian Parker honeymoon over. The 34-year-old looked his age in his first-ever regular-season game in charge of a defense. Too many breakdowns in zone coverage. Playing too soft on third down. No pass rush. Not enough blitzes. It was ghoulishly reminiscent of the Matt Eberflus era.
The Giants didn't even get to third down often, but when they did, they were nearly automatic, converting nine of their 11 attempts.
Parker has plenty of time to prove this was nothing more than a rocky debut, but Cowboys fans waited an entire offseason for a defense that would be more fundamentally sound. They got the exact opposite in Week 1.
Brian Schottenheimer still coaching scared
Um, why is Brian Schottenheimer scared to get an inch against a division rival the Cowboys have dominated for a decade? Replay assist ruled that George Pickens was short of the sticks on third-and-9, leaving Dallas with a very manageable fourth down.
And yet, Schottenheimer elected to punt the ball away.
Sneak it with Dak Prescott. Roll him out and find a tight end. Ask CeeDee Lamb or Pickens to win one-on-one on the outside. Hand it to Javonte Williams. You have a wealth of options at your disposal, and you punt? That’s way too conservative of an approach when you have one of the elite offenses in football.
The decision fired up the Giants and their fan base, and they turned that momentum into an opening-drive touchdown to take a 7-0 lead. One has to wonder if Dallas would have scored had Schottenheimer coached with a little more conviction. Indefensible decision, and it set the tone for the rest of the game.
First half penalties
There's complementary football, and there's whatever the Cowboys put on film at MetLife Stadium. Here's a quick rundown of the penalties Dallas committed in the first two quarters. Not the entire game. In one half of football. It's a big reason they trailed 14-7 on the scoreboard.
- Quinnen Williams offside
- DeMarvion Overshown late hit on Jaxson Dart
- Illegal block on special teams by Jonathan Mingo
- Illegal shift
- Jaishawn Barham neutral zone infraction
- Luke Schoonmaker holding
- Terence Steele illegal hands to the face
According to ESPN Research (via Todd Archer), seven penalties are Dallas' most in the first half of a season since 2008.
In total, the Cowboys committed nine penalties for 90 yards. They have more to clean up than just penalties, but they shot themselves in the foot throughout this game.
Bad George Pickens game
Everyone watching George Pickens' first-quarter drop was just him shaking off the rust. He rebounded with a couple of grabs to suggest that was the case. However, the drops returned late in the second quarter with the score knotted up at 7-7.
On 2nd-and-4, Dak Prescott dropped a dime of a deep ball up the sideline into Pickens' breadbasket. It slipped right through his hands. It might not have gone for six, but it would have at least pushed Dallas into field goal range. The drive ended with a Prescott interception, and the Giants made them pay with a touchdown before halftime to take a 14-7 lead.
Much like Brian Schottenheimer's decision to punt on 4th-and-inches, Pickens' drop was a turning point. Prescott's INT was careless, but one has to wonder how the game would have turned out if Pickens held on.
Giants bullied the Cowboys
The Cowboys got bullied. Plain and simple. They had to know that John Harbaugh wanted to set the tone by running the football, and he did so without much pushback, as the Giants rushed for 165 yards on 4.5 yards per attempt. It was death by a thousand paper cuts.
On the offensive side, Dallas struggled to create movement in the run game. Yes, Tyler Smith would have helped, but that doesn't excuse getting pushed around at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.
Javonte Williams averaged 3.4 YPC and that number would be lower if he turned sure-fire negative runs into positive gains. He got hit a lot behind and at the line of scrimmage.
This was supposed to be a more physical Cowboys team. Instead, the Giants were the ones who dictated the terms in the trenches.
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