CLUTCH & GO
THE final stake was a replay, one that proved a football had bounced against the MetLife Stadium turf before it nestled into the arms of Dez Bryant. That was it. That was the ballgame. The scoreboard read Giants 10, Cowboys 7, and it would read that way forever.
That’s when the roar came tumbling out of the farthest reaches of the stadium, where most of the 80,874 who had arrived hours earlier in the snow still were in their seats, braving the frosty air, not even thinking of making an early break for the Turnpike. No way. Not this time. Not this game.
“It was our time today,” Giants safety Landon Collins said, and it was every bit of that. Two weeks shy of Christmas, with the weather turning foul and frigid, the Giants broke out an old, smash-mouth game plan from another time and another stadium. They didn’t just beat the Cowboys on Sunday night. They battered them. As a happy bonus, they sent a message, too — one the visitors had to have heard loud, clear and unobstructed.
“They’re a good team, and we knew we needed our best effort to beat them,” Eli Manning said. “And that’s what we gave them.”
Manning occupied half of the biggest play of the night, a quick slant to Odell Beckham Jr. that went for 61 yards and the gamewinning touchdown, a prime-time play in the teeth of a prime-time game, a flash and a flourish that not only stunned the Cowboys but seemed to crush their spirit, too.
“He’s a special player,” Manning said. “You hit him in stride, good things are going to happen.”
Still, if the promise of regular Eli-to-Odell electricity is what has made these Giants so irresistible all year, it was an old-school effort, stone-cold Giants on an ice-cold day, that helped paint the game blue in the end.
For while it’s the Cowboys who usually pound the ball between Ezekiel Elliott’s numbers in order to soften defenses for Dak Prescott, on this night, it was the Giants who called more running plays (33-28) and the Cowboys who started flinging the ball more than running it (37-25).
And while it is the Cowboys who generally control the ball against everybody, who bleed the clock thanks to Elliott’s legs and the best offensive line in football, on this night it was the Giants — who generally can’t be bothered to own the clock since they’re usually too busy hurrying back to the line of scrimmage — who had that advantage, 30 minutes and 52 seconds to 29:08.
“A tough, hard-nosed win in the elements,” said Ben McAdoo, who answered the bell splendidly in the first truly critical game of his head-coaching career. “We kept trying to stack running plays, kept pounding the rock.”
And now, as a result, it’s real, all the hype and hope attached to the 8-3 start. Now it makes sense. Look, the Giants still are going to have a hard time — an impossible time, really — catching the Cowboys in the NFC East, even after securing a season sweep of the series. And here’s the way to react to that fact: So what?
Consider the Giants firmly and securely planted in the Cowboys’ heads, if there happens to be a third date between the two scheduled for sometime next month. And beyond that: Consider the rest of the NFC on notice because this is exactly the kind of performance that hints at greater things to come, when every week the season comes under referendum.
It doesn’t matter the ’07 Giants and the ’11 Giants made the runs they made. Honestly, those teams could have played in Kansas City and Tampa Bay for all the relevance that has to what lies in front of this team. With the exception of the quarterback, there’s little to compare those years, except this:
These were precisely the kinds of games those Giants teams won, late in the seasons and all across the championship postseasons. Games with zero margin for error. Games where you had to minimize mistakes and not allow the ones you made to haunt you. Games that often as not occur in lousy weather. The Giants did all of that Sunday night, and it makes you wonder what could be next.
“We didn’t blink, and we didn’t flinch,” McAdoo said. “We just played our game.”
That was good enough Sunday, and it’ll be plenty good enough in January, a game that looks just like this one: old-school, coldschool. Ready for January, and all the possibility that lurks therein.