NO SHEP FOR ’BOYS BASH
Giants are overdue for magic MetLife moment vs. Dallas
EVERY now and again, you need to make a statement: to your fans, to your opponents, to yourselves. The Giants need one of those Monday night at MetLife Stadium. They need to clear their throats and shout at the sky and let the rest of professional football hear them.
They need to beat the Dallas Cowboys.
It will be only one win, won’t count for any extra, no matter how deep the rivalry is. The record would still be just 3-6. They are almost certainly not going to the playoffs for a third straight year, for a seventh time in the past eight. There are still issues that need to be addressed, holes that need to be filled. A win won’t be a magic elixir in any way.
Win the game anyway. Prove you really are going in the right direction. Heck, three weeks ago the Cowboys were at the Meadowlands and the Jets bested them, and yes, that whole sentence looks like a typo.
“I think we’ re a better team than when we played them in the opener,” Giants coach Pat Shurmur said this week. “We’ve made some improvements in a lot of areas. That first game, we gave up a lot of big plays. We can’t do that and expect to win any games. That’s where you start first and then take it from there.”
Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, Dave Gettleman treated this week’s trading deadline the way Brodie Van Wagenen did for the Mets back in July: acquiring rather than shedding, fortifying rather than frittering, adding Leonard Williams for a couple of draft picks and keeping all of his key components.
That was one message delivered by the football Giants this week. Monday they can offer another one.
“When I say we live in the real world, we don’t respond to all of that stuff because we don’t put that stuff out there,” Shurmur said. “So, we go about our business and deal with the things that actually happen. We’re doing what we can to win this very next game and then every game beyond that. We added a good player on defense that will hopefully help us do that.”
Williams, of course, has some things to prove, but he will be a fresh burst of energy on the Giants’ defensive line.
“I’m a good team player. I’m a good player on the field, I’m a good guy off the field,” Williams said after the trade. “I’m just someone who is going to give it my all in the classroom, on the field, asa leader, asa teammate and everything like that.”
Williams will help vanquish the Cowboys, and so will Daniel Jones (a cameo appearance on opening night), and so will Saquon Barkley, who looked like he might rush for 400 yards against them that night, but then somehow found himself without the ball in his hands.
“It’s always a great opportunity to try and get a win in your division, whether it’s Dallas, the Redskins or the Eagles,” Barkley said. “They got us the first time. We get a shot at them again, not only to try and get a win but to try to get things rolling as a team.”
Rolling might be beyond the team’s grasp. But there ought to still be reasons to wag by this team. There ought to be an excitement to the Cowboys coming to town, a team the Giants have spent 50 years comparing themselves to and trying to out-do.
There ought to be a sense of urgency at MetLife on Monday. Send a message. Send a warning flare to the sky: It’s been eight years of lousy football. You’ve had enough.
“I don’t think we’re bad. We just have to figure out how to win games, we just have to figure that part out ,” Barkley said. “I know it sounds like it’s easy to do, but obviously if it was easy to do a lot more teams would have a winning record. I think we can be better because we’re all there and we’re all talented individuals, yes, I do agree with that. At the end of the day, [what] we need to be better at is figuring out how to win. It’s not individually. We just have to f ind ways to score more points, whether you need 13 points to win a game, 28 points to win a game or you need three — you just have to find a way to win games.”
Not a bad plan. Not a bad idea to start implementing that Monday night.