News & Blogs

Everything is closer in Texas.

With their 29-24 victory against Dallas on Sunday, the Giants improved to 4-0 in the new Cowboys Stadium since it opened for business in 2009.

The win column may be lopsided, but the margin of victory isn’t. The Giants have outscored the Cowboys 140-124 in Arlington, which comes out to an average advantage of four points per contest. Meanwhile, the largest victory came in 2010 when the Giants won 41-35, while the closest was the first in 2009, a 33-31 win.

“These games down here, it’s got to be something in the water,” said David Diehl, the longest-tenured Giant on the roster. “Because each one comes down to the last play to either a blocked field goal like it was last year, a big play there at the end that was ruled not a catch because his hand was out of bounds. It just seems that these games come down to the wire. It’s the team that makes the last play is the one that’s going to come away with it.”

It nearly turned out differently, though.

Despite jumping out to a 23-0 lead early in the second quarter, the Giants had to sweat it out to the bitter end as Dallas had a chance to win the game in the final seconds.

The Giants put themselves in that situation partly due to their inability to find the end zone. Rather, Lawrence Tynes had a busy night kicking five field goals, all of which came when the offense had driven inside Dallas’ 25-yard line.

“You like the fact that you’re getting points and you’re getting into scoring position, but our defense set us up with some great field position,” Eli Manning said of the defense and special teams forcing six turnovers. “We’ve got to find a way to get touchdowns and not settle for field goals. So we could have done a better job of trying to end that game a little bit earlier, getting off to a bigger lead. It could easily been 35-nothing instead of 23 and really set the stage for the whole game. But we came out with the win. You take every one, but we know we’ve got to play better football.”