FRISCO, TEXAS — In week five’s NFC East divisional match-up, the 1-3 Dallas Cowboys and the 0-4 New York Giants are desperately hoping to turn their mediocre seasons around. If not now, then when?
Giants
- First-year head coach Joe Judge will be accompanied by former Cowboys’ head coach Jason Garrett. As the Giant’s offensive coordinator, Garrett is making New York headlines but not in a pleasant way after the offense’s struggling performance through the first four weeks of the 2020 NFL season. The Giants rank last in points per game with an 11.8 average. Over the past two games, the Giants were not able to find the end zone and the only points on the scoreboard came from three field goals in each of the contests.
The club’s featured back, Saquon Barkley, tore his ACL against the Bears in week two and the Giants have not been able to get the ground game rolling in his absence. To top things off, the offensive line has lacked in pass protection resulting in 14 sacks on Daniel Jones (third-most in the NFL) for 83 yards. It is a copycat league, and teams have been effective in getting to Jones on stunts and blitzes. On 64 blitz passing situations this season, the Giants have allowed a sack on 14.1% of those blitzes, the highest sack percentage on a blitz this year.
- Defensively, The Giants rank sixth in passing yards allowed, allowing an average of 221.5 yards per game. The squad limited Ben Roethlisberger, Mitchell Trubisky, and Jared Goff to less than 230 passing yards. New defensive coordinator Patrick Graham uses multiple schemes to try and confuse quarterbacks. Leonard Williams, Blake Martinez, and Kyler Fackrell will try and exploit the Cowboys’ banged up offensive line and wreak havoc on Dak Prescott. They have obviously witnessed the ball security issues by Dallas and will certainly try to knock the ball out at every opportunity.
Cowboys
- The Giants might be struggling to put points on the board, but the Cowboys defense has continued to allow teams to rack up points. Dallas is on the hot seat after giving up a franchise-worst 307 rushing yards last week against the Browns. The unit has allowed 126 total points through the past three games, which marks the worst three-game span for the defense in team history. Yikes. The Cowboys have had many injuries pile up in both the secondary and at linebacker, but they will potentially have Anthony Brown back on Sunday. He is eligible to return from injured reserve and took part in individual drills on Wednesday.
The defense will be striving for redemption against Daniel Jones and company on Sunday.
Nose tackle, Antwaun Woods told media “ Anytime you get hit in the mouth especially like a performance like that, the whole world is going to be looking at how we’re going to respond, you’ll see.”
- On Offense, Dak Prescott is breaking records and leading nearly every statistical passing category through week four. He has 1,690 yards so far in 2020, the most passing yards through four games by a quarterback in NFL history. Despite the big numbers, the Cowboys have turned the ball over nine times including a league-high six fumbles. The mistakes have led to 45 points for opponents, which have put the team behind the eight ball early on forcing the Cowboys to become one-dimensional to catch up. Taking care of the football is critical and unless they fix the issue, history will continue repeating itself. In what bothers him the most through the first four weeks of the season, Dak Prescott emphatically stated, “ the turnovers. Obviously, a couple of interceptions and the sack fumble as well. You’ve got to take care of the ball. I’m somebody that takes a lot of pride in that. I’ve always said ball security is job security. For me, it’s about taking care of the ball and not putting our team in a compromising situation…”
