If Giants don't beat Cowboys, their season already is over
Giants head coach Brian Daboll speaking to the media after a Week 1 loss to the Washington Commanders on Sept. 7 in Landover, MD. Credit: AP/Stephanie Scarbrough
It’s always hard to call a Week 2 game a “must-win.”
Yet here we are.
The Giants are heading to Dallas, a city they visit annually in which they haven’t won since 2016. It’s not just the specter of going 0-2 that hovers over them, but the added menace of potentially being 0-2 in the NFC East . . . a division in which they have lost their last seven games, by the way, and still have two contests against the defending Super Bowl champs next month.
We’ve already had the star receiver shouting on the sideline, the head coach leaving the door open — if just for a few hours — regarding a quarterback change, a return to the open speculation on that head coach’s job security, zero touchdowns . . . and we’re only one game into this thing!
The fact is that if the Giants can’t beat the Cowboys in Week 2, this season is effectively over. They may win some games eventually, they may even drum up some interest if they start playing rookie Jaxson Dart at quarterback, but any chance they may have had of truly succeeding in 2025 will have evaporated.
The home crowd hasn’t even gotten a chance to cheer them yet.
Or boo them.
“For a multitude of reasons, it’s extremely big,” linebacker and defensive captain Bobby Okereke said of Sunday’s matchup. “Obviously it’s the next game. A division game on the road against a very good opponent. It’s a great opportunity to establish our identity.”
Oh, it’ll be established. One way or the other.
This is the space from whence patience and calm are typically preached, or at least an attempt to be balanced against panic is attempted. Yet the circumstances are such that it is almost impossible to envision any escape from the drudgery of yet another lost season if the Giants drop this one.
“Must-win” is a phrase that can be used only once or twice a season, so it is typically saved for much later in the year. Sixty minutes of play have elapsed, and it’s already become time to trot it out.
Sure, things can change quickly in this league, and they might for the Giants. Three weeks ago, who would have thought this game between the Giants and Cowboys would be played without either of the two starting linebackers named Micah. Since then, Parsons has been traded to Green Bay and McFadden suffered a potentially season-ending foot injury in the opener in Washington.
One thing that has remained constant in the sport of football, though, is that being 0-2 is no way to start off. According to RotoWire, since the 2015 season, 83 teams have lost their first two games and only nine have made the playoffs (10.8%).
There were 16 teams that lost their opener. How many will fall into the 0-2 hole? That’ll be determined on Sunday and Monday. But only five face the possibility of being 0-2 in the division after this weekend: the Giants and Cowboys (who play each other), the Lions and Bears (who play each other) and the Browns.
It wasn’t long ago that the Giants, fresh and flush off their surprise playoff run of 2022, were talking about “closing the gap” on the rest of the division. They finished in third place that year with only one win in the NFC East and still earned a wild-card berth. Since then, they have only fallen further behind.
Under coach Brian Daboll, the Giants are 4-15-1 against Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington, including that postseason loss to the Eagles.
This is an issue that predates Daboll and these players, though. The NFC East has been so competitive and balanced that it hasn’t had a repeat winner in 20 seasons. That’s been mostly a three-team rotation for the past 13, though. The Giants haven’t won it since 2011, their last Super Bowl season. Since then, the Eagles and Cowboys have finished in first place five times each and Washington has done it three times. In those 13 seasons plus the playoff game and last week’s opener, the Giants are 27-52-1 against their division opponents.
“You need to go out there and win division games,” second-year cornerback Dru Phillips said. “That’s what this league comes down to, it’s what we need to go out and do. This team, we can.”
They just haven’t. Not since Phillips and Malik Nabers and many others arrived here. They are all 0-fers in the NFC East.
Then there is the long losing streak in Dallas itself. Eight straight losses.
The last time the Giants won at Dallas, Ben McAdoo was making his head-coaching debut in 2016. That’s so long ago that there isn’t a player on the Giants’ roster who has won a game at AT&T Stadium for the team. Only eight Giants were in the league when last they won there.
“I didn’t know that,” Phillips said. “That’s cool.”
Then he thought about it for a second, laughed and amended his reaction.
“That’s actually not cool,” he said. “But I really want to go win this Sunday, I can tell you that.”
Okereke said of streaks and records and previous failures: “We don’t carry the negativity from the past; it doesn’t serve us. We’re looking forward, having that renewed mindset to go win in Dallas and be 1-1 after the second week.”
If they can do that, the goals of this season still will be attainable and the optimism of the three-win preseason with its 30-points-per-game average can return. It’ll be the Cowboys who suddenly are in the abyss of being 0-2 overall and in the division.
But if they can’t?
Then the next 15 contests over the coming four months will be nothing more than preseason games for the 2026 season.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
