FRISCO, TX – The Dallas Cowboys (1-1) will head to New York for some Monday Night Football against the undefeated Giants (2-0) for their first NFC East matchup this season. The Philadelphia Eagles are in the running for the NFC East at 2-0 and the Giants are right behind them at 2-0 as well. The Cowboys are currently last in the NFC East at 1-1. The NFC East currently has the best record in the NFL at 6-2.
Things to look out for this week:
Offense:
This will be Cooper Rush’s third career start for the Cowboys. He is currently 2-0 and if he leads Dallas to a win on Monday night he will be the one of three Cowboys QB’s to start their career off at 3-0. If Rush can throw two touchdown passes on Monday he will tie Tony Romo for the most passing touchdowns by a Cowboys quarterback in their first three starts.
We will see a similar run game from Tony Pollard and Ezekiel Elliott. They will both be sharing time in the back field on Monday as Dallas continues to push the run game.
The biggest question mark that the Cowboys have right now is who is going to take the open roster spot that is now open due to the front office waiving wide receiver Dennis Houston on Tuesday morning. There’s been talk that Michael Gallup will be able to play on Monday. Gallup has been rehabbing since his ACL injury that happened in January. According to head coach Mike McCarthy he said that Gallup did have a full practice on Wednesday.
“(Gallup) will take a full slate of reps this week and he will give him every opportunity this week to return on Monday.” McCarthy said.
On Thursday morning McCarthy told us Michael Gallup has passed his physical and is able to play. It’s more about reps and getting him up to speed since he has not played in a game since January.
“We have already crossed the physical. It’s more about getting the reps and getting him up to speed.” McCarthy said in the Thursday morning press conference.
Another option is Jalen Tolbert. The rookie third-round pick out of South Alabama was expected to be a starter at the beginning of the season but instead he has been inactive for the first two games of the season.
Jerry Jones told us early this week that there are two reasons the front office decided to hold him back for the first two games. One, the Cowboys put way too much on his plate in the beginning of his career and wanted him to learn all three wideout positions due to how well he did in training camp. Second, he had a hamstring injury late in the summer that slowed him down a bit.
McCarthy has told us that Tolbert has really improved over the coming weeks and with Houston’s release it could mean that Tolbert has produced enough in practice to be ready for Monday night’s game.
Defense:
Defensively, Dallas has one of the best pass rushes in the NFL. Micah Parsons has wrecked every team’s gameplay so far this season and the Bucs and the Bengals offensive lines struggled keeping Parsons off their QB. Parsons has recorded two sacks per game so far this season and he intends to continue to rack them up.
The Giants quarterback Daniel Jones has been sacked eight times in the last two games so I think it’s safe to say that the Giants offensive line is going to have their hands full with Micah Parsons and the fast pass rush that this Dallas team has.
Trevon Diggs and Anthony Brown did a good job against the Bengals wide receivers but did give up some catches. Diggs had nine targets and gave up seven catches for 75 yards. Brown had 10 targets and gave up seven receptions for 69 yards and one touchdown.
The good news is the Giants rely a lot on their run offense and their wide receivers didn’t have a lot of productivity against the Panthers last week. Jones threw for under 200 yards in both wins and let Sequon Barkley and the run game take over.
These two teams will kick off on Monday Night Football at 7:15 CST in New York.
