MAYHEM IN DALLAS
Cowboys turning on coach already, and they’re in FIRST PLACE
Bombshell anonymous quotes from Dallas Cowboys players reinforced on Tuesday why the NFC East remains wide open for the Giants’ taking. Cowboys players told NFL Network after Monday’s 38-10 loss to the Arizona Cardinals that Dallas coach Mike McCarthy and his staff are
“totally unprepared. They don’t teach.
They don’t have any sense of adjusting on the fly,” per insider Jane Slater.
“They just aren’t good at their jobs,” another player said.
So the first-place Cowboys (2-4) are at each other’s throats with franchise QB Dak Prescott out for the season. The injury-riddled Eagles (1-4-1) are limping from game to game. Washington (1-5-0) already has given up on quarterback Dwayne Haskins.
And then there are the Giants (1-5) and first-year coach Joe Judge, coming off their first win of the season and still playing together, even if they’re not playing well enough yet.
Does it matter why the Giants are still a factor in their division race despite an 0-5 start? No, it does not. All that matters now is beating the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field on Thursday night and asserting themselves as an unlikely contender.
“Our division is winnable,” safety Logan Ryan said Tuesday. “We have to win some games to put ourselves in position at the end of the year to strike.”
If the NFC East’s futility is shocking, that’s because this year’s division is historically bad.
The 2020 NFC East is the second-worst division ever through six weeks since the 1970 NFL-AFL merger, per the Elias Sports Bureau. And the Eagles’ Week 3 tie with the Bengals is the only reason it isn’t tied for being the worst ever.
Only the 1984 AFC Central (5-19-0, .208) had a worse winning percentage through six weeks than this year’s NFC East (5-18-1, .229), according to Elias.
The division’s losing is nothing new.
Last season’s NFC East (24-40, .375) finished in a fourway tie for the fourth-worst winning percentage by a division since 1970. Only the 2008 NFC West (22-42-0, .344), 2014 NFC South (22-41-1, .352) and 2008 AFC West (23-41-0, .359) were worse, per Elias.
But it is lining up incredibly well for the Giants if they can keep improving and also not let Thursday’s moment get too big, which Judge certainly is not doing as a coach.
“I don’t think anyone in the division needs any motivation
to play anyone else in the division,” Judge said. “I’ve told the players from the very beginning of the season, it’s a long year. If you get too focused on looking down at the end stretch at this point right here, you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. No matter what happened last Sunday, we need to come in with the same mindset to improve, which will lead to our collective rise.”
The Giants’ first NFC East title since 2011 is still a long way from happening, considering their recent history in division: They have lost seven straight to the Eagles and seven straight to the Cowboys dating back to 2016.
But Ryan contended those statistics are “clickbait,” and strong safety Jabrill Peppers said he’s entering his first ever Giants-Eagles game (due to injuries last season) with urgency to dial the Giants up a notch.
He knows Thursday’s game and Week 9 and 10 rematches with Washington and Philly, respectively, give the Giants a chance to do something special. Their final division game is Week 17 hosting Dallas.
“The guys all know what’s going on,” Peppers said. “We’re R all here to win. But it’s definitely time to get the ball rolling.” yan reiterated that the Giants can’t make Thursday’s game “too big,” though. They just need to attack it like any game, knowing a victory is necessary to get the Giants where they want to be.
“Anytime you’re playing at night, anytime you’re in prime time, it’s big enough,” Ryan said. “Everybody’s gonna be watching. You’ll get a text from your third-grade science teacher on how they taught you how to do it or something like that.”
“We’re gonna play these guys again. We’re gonna play Washington again and Dallas,” he added. “So I wouldn’t put all the chips on the line yet. But I I’m going all out and giving it my all regardless of what the stakes are.”