Moral of the story is Giants gotta be better
THEY AREN’T supposed to exist in professional sports, not as long as both teams are being paid. Moral victories? No thank you. Better to fess up and say you got your arse handed to you. Better to say you simply aren’t as good. Better to say nothing at all. Moral victories?
Save them for Pop Warner. Except …
Well, this was a moral victory for the Giants. What happened across 60 minutes on the field at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, was a football massacre of the highest order — on the field more than the scoreboard, which would ultimately settle on Cowboys 44, Giants 20. By the end, just making it to the bus, and to the plane, with a slim majority of the traveling party intact qualified as a moral victory.
The Giants were already shorthanded, missing a couple of receivers, missing their vastly improved tackle, Andrew Thomas, light on the defensive side.
Then Saquon Barkley stepped on Jourdan Lewis’ foot, his ankle going one way and the rest of No. 26 going another.
Then Daniel Jones tried to make a play at the goal line, led with his helmet, got his bell rung, wobbled off the field.
Then Kenny Golladay didn’t answer the bell for the second half.
“Our guys are going to keep playing and keep fighting for 60 minutes,” Giants coach Joe Judge said when the carnage was complete. “That’s our next-man-up mentality, guys stepping up, being productive and making plays.”
The Giants had gotten after the Cowboys, acting as if all of them were wearing Troy Aikman’s old No. 8, as if all of them had Aikman’s words frozen in a cartoon voice bubble: “In my opinion, and I understand in the NFL anybody can beat anybody and all that — [the Giants] aren’t in Dallas’ class as far as I’m concerned.”
They’d intercepted Dak Prescott early. They’d benefitted from a sloppy Cowboys snap in the shadow of their goal line, snuffing another Dallas drive. A play after Jones was forced to depart, they’d actually tied the game at 10-10, giving close to 100,000 Cowboys disciples a legitimate moment of concern.
But there is only so much you can do in the NFL when you are down your starting quarterback, down your starting tailback, down your top three receivers. There is only so much you can do when you are playing the clear cream of your division, a Cowboys team that sure has the look of a team with genuine ambition.
“It all went exactly as I expected it would go,” Judge said. “Whoever’s in the game I expect to play and play well.”
Judge himself has never used the term “moral victory” after any of his 21 games as the Giants’ head coach. He understands the ramifications that term carries. Coaches want to be judged on actual victories. They ask to be arbitrated by the scoreboard. The way Bill Parcells used to put it was thusly: “No medals for trying.”
Judge put it this way: “It wasn’t good enough.”
No medals for the Giants. Not after this one. Not after the two gutcrunching losses to the Falcons and WFT earlier this year.
The one thing you know about the Giants is that you’re going to get a professional effort every week. You’re going to get 60 minutes of them getting after you, regardless of the haphazard state of their depth chart. On the one hand, there is something refreshing about that; they don’t succumb to anything: bad football, bad luck, bad karma. On the other hand? They’re paid to care. They’re paid to try. No medals for trying.
So there was no utterance of “moral victory” Sunday in the Dallas suburbs. The Giants jogged onto the field expecting to wash Aikman’s mouth out with soap and make the present Cowboys pay for his hubris; they limped off a battered team, a beaten team, wondering who, exactly, will be able to report for work this week as they prepare for the Rams.
Tough gig. Tough game. Tough luck. There was no room for victories in North Texas on Sunday — moral, actual, or otherwise.