EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — That was different.
Yes, the simple fact that the New York Giants won a season-opener on Sunday night was different. The Giants had lost six of seven season-opening games against the Dallas Cowboys prior to Sunday’s impressive 28-20 victory. They had started 10 of the 13 previous seasons 0-2 or worse.
So, sure, Sunday was different in that sense.
What was really different, though, was the atmosphere inside MetLife Stadium throughout the night.
Fans of the Cowboys, Philadelphia
Eagles, and other teams have made a habit in recent years of infiltrating and taking over the Giants’ home stadium. Not Sunday night.
Maybe it was emotions from the 9/11 commemorations by the Giants. Maybe it was the beginning of the John Harbaugh Era following a summer of optimistic reporting about the state of the team. Maybe it was the introductions of Malik Nabers, who played, and Odell Beckham Jr., who officially returned.
Whatever it was, the atmosphere inside MetLife Stadium was electric.
From the second the Cowboys stepped on the field things were different. Dallas was booed so vociferously it was impossible to notice that there were thousands of Cowboys fans in the stadium. Long after the game ended, loud “Let’s Go Giants” chants from happy Giants fans reverberated around the building.
Harbaugh called it an “unbelievable environment.”
“This crowd, I’m telling you, man, the parking lot. The parking lot was off the chain driving in here. It was packed! I’m talking like four and half hours before the game,” Harbaugh said. “I get here early now, and I’m thinking it’s going to be easy to get in here and it wasn’t. And then the stadium was just absolutely electric from beginning to end. The sideline was electric before the game. I mean the whole thing was just quite an environment. It was really great to be a part of it and to see our guys step up in that environment, to handle all that and to focus on the football.
“It was more than I expected in all honesty. It was incredible. The stadium was unbelievable. It was everything that you would think, but it was more than I thought. It was really something. I want us to play well enough that we can create that atmosphere every single week here going forward throughout the season. That’s up to us. That’s our job as coaches and players to create a football team good enough to deserve that type of a stadium every time we play.”
Sunday was a reminder of what Giants football can look and sound like when the team is going well. Players noticed.
“New York likes winning,” Kayvon Thibodeaux said. “When we win, it’s fun.”
It certainly was on Sunday.
Veteran offensive tackle Jermaine Eleumunor, in the league since 2017, smiled when asked about the atmosphere.
“I’ve never seen a crowd like that ever before,” Eluemunor said. “It just gets you going. You don’t want to disappoint that crowd. You want to keep that same crowd the entire season. The fans don’t know how much that means to everyone. It means a lot.”
With the release last week of Darius Slayton, star left tackle Andrew Thomas is now the longest-tenured Giant. He has been with the team since 2020. Thomas said the playoff season of 2022 is the only other time he has experience a home crowd like that in MetLife Stadium.
“It was great to see,” Thomas said. “It means everything. We play for the fans. We want to give them a good product.”
Running back Cam Skattebo has talked in the past about wanting to be part of changing the expectations around a Giants team that has been mostly down-trodden since winning the Super Bowl at the end of the 2011 season. He said Sunday’s atmosphere was “beautiful.”
“It was an amazing crowd. It was awesome to have everybody that showed up tonight be as loud as possible,” Skattebo said. “On third down you couldn’t hear anything. It’s been awesome to be able to be a part of this.
“We’re gonna build on this. We want every home game to be like this. This is how every home game should be, whether it’s Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football or if it’s just a regular game. They all should be this big. They all should be this wild.”
Quarterback Jaxson Dart, who put together a spectacular 23 of 29, 230-yard, 3 touchdown performance, also lauded the atmosphere.
“Seeing the crowd out there tonight, they had a huge impact in the game, just the energy and momentum. That stuff’s huge,” Dart said. “So, just everybody showing up, showing out on a big night like tonight, where it was bigger than even just the game itself, was just a really special environment to be in.”
The Giants, of course, hope it was the start of something that will become a regular occurrence and not just an aberration.
Here are more ‘things I think’ after Sunday’s game.
Malik Nabers made a difference
Nabers said he didn’t decided until he was on the field two hours before the game that he would play. He didn’t even have family in attendance because he didn’t want to be pressured to play if he didn’t feel right.
“During warmups I felt really good, I felt good running around,” Nabers said. I was catching really (well), I stretched really (well), warmup went pretty well. I just felt like it was time to go.“
Nabers went, and went well. He finished with six catches for 69 yards.
Give an assist to Harbaugh for helping Nabers realize he was ready for game action. Harbaugh, 63, apparently tackled Nabers during a walk-through at the end of the week.
“We were all just chilling on the sideline. It was right before we were supposed to start our walkthrough, and things were just up in the air. We didn’t know exactly what was going to happen,” Dart said. “And me and Coach Harbs kind of had some conversations. He’s like, ‘You know what, like, I think that once he gets hit for the first time and realizes that he’s okay, then he’s going to feel confident.’ So I think in his mind that triggered, ‘Oh, maybe I should tackle him right then and there.’ So, we’re all just standing there, and then all of a sudden Leek goes down on the ground, and our team’s super protective of him. So we all turned to look, and it’s Coach Harbs tackling Leek, and then he pops up and he goes, ‘See, you’re all good.’”
Jaxson Dart
How good was the Giants’ second-year quarterback on Sunday? This good:
Dart was in control throughout. He was on target. He forced maybe one pass all night. He used his legs on both designed runs and scrambles. He got out of bounds. He got down. When he took a late hit out of bounds it seemed like the entire Giants sideline jumped to his defense.
“I felt very comfortable,” Dart said. “I thought that we just did a really good job of staying in progress throughout the game, whether it was the run game, whether it was the pass game. Thought our O-line just played their ass off, and that just helped everything around. So, I’m really just happy with how the offense executed. I thought Nags (Giants offensive coordinator Matt Nagy) called an awesome game, and I thought the guys just played really, really hard. So, it made my job a lot easier, and guys all over the place made a ton of plays, so I’m excited about that.”
I told you so
All summer I kept mentioning the idea that Isaiah Likely had become Dart’s favorite target in “gotta have it” situations. Well, among Likely’s eight catches on Sunday were a pair of touchdowns in the red zone, and four plays that produced first downs.
I missed on this one
I expected Najee Harris to play and Tyrone Tracy to be inactive vs. the Cowboys. After Tracy fumbled away a scoring opportunity Sunday night, I am pretty certain that is what we will see next week against the Los Angeles Rams.
Physical football
Harbaugh wants the Giants to be a physical team that imposes its will on oppoents. That is what the Giants did to the Cowboys.
On Skattebo’s 3-yard touchdown run, fullback Patrick Ricard drove Dallas defender DemarVion Overshown about three yards into the end zone. Skattebo kept knocking defenders backwards. The Giants ran when they wanted to, totaling 165 yards. They held Dallas below 4.0 yards per carry.
The Giants never sacked Dak Prescott, but it was clear the line of scrimmage belong to the Giants on Sunday. Tht is old-school Giants football.
One thing to worry about
Cornerback. Tae Banks and Greg Newsome started. Banks was pretty good. Newsome was up-and-down, committing a 37-yard defensive pass interference. When Paulson Adebo had to come into the game? Yuck!
Sunday, to me, did not do anything to assuage worries that there will be times this season when the Giants’ cornerbacks get exposed.
