It’s safe to say that the New York Giants Week 1 win over the Dallas Cowboys was a stunner.
While most Giants fans picked the Giants to beat the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football, fewer fans and very few in the media actually expected the Giants to win. But even the fans who predicted the Giants’ win didn’t see how coming.
How the Giants beat the Cowboys has been one of the storylines of the past week and many around the NFL media landscape have started to view the Giants in a new light.
This week we asked
Giants fans which aspect of the Giants’ win surprised them the most, and the best answer seems to be “Everything.”
I won’t go so far as to say that fans expected how well quarterback Jaxson Dart played. His command of the offense and the improvements in his footwork, as well as how well he read the defense and navigated his reads is definitely a storyline.
But considering how much of a pain point the Giants’ defense was over the last couple years, it isn’t a surprise that a full 71% of fans were surprised by some aspect of the defensive play.
The Giants were aided in the passing game by George Pickens drops, but the Cowboys were also aided by some questionable pass interference calls (and a non-call). But even so, considering many were expecting Greg Newsome II, Deonte Banks, Jevon Holland, and Tyler Nubin to be an abject disaster, their play to contain a potent Dallas passing attack was impressive.
Likewise, the Giants’ run defense was nearly as surprising. Expectations may have been tempered a bit by the Cowboys losing their best offensive lineman, however the Giants’ front 7 was generally stout and did a good job of swarming the ball.
Both aspects of the defense were aided by an absolutely suffocating offense that allowed the Giants to fully dictate the pace and flow of the game.
We didn’t know quite what the Giants’ offense would look like, or how well it would function. The early results are an interesting, and fun, blend of Greg Roman’s unga-bunga caveman ball with creative misdirection and passing concepts. The combination of philosophies went well together and not only allowed the Giants to control the game on the ground, it gave Jaxson Dart answers to attack Dallas through the air.
There is, of course, the reaction that the Giants’ offense only looked good because it went against Dallas. The upcoming game against the Los Angeles Rams should provide a stiffer test on both offense and defense. As of this writing, FanDuel still lists the Giants as 7.5-point underdogs on the road against the Rams.
For now, however, Giants fans are probably the most confident in their team that they’ve been since February 6th, 2012.
Giants fans currently feel better about their team than any other fanbase in the NFL, at least according to our weekly confidence polls.
The fact that 95% of fans were already confident that the Giants were heading in the right direction prior to week 1 was already among the highest marks in the SB Nation network. But confidence has only risen after seeing how the Giants beat the Cowboys.
Almost universal fan confidence likely isn’t sustainable over the course of a full season. There will be losses, bumps in the road, and missteps from the coaching staff or players. But at least for now, fans are riding the high of a domineering win over a hated division rival.
(Note: As in previous years, I’ll be providing a chart to follow fan confidence over the course of the season. However it needs more than two data points before it’s worth including.)
