Daniel Jones ran for his life and Saquon Barkley ran for a highlight-reel touchdown.
But Brian Daboll’s Giants finished flat and fell to Cooper Rush and the division rival Dallas Cowboys, 23-16, on Monday Night Football for their first loss of the season.
They also lost veteran receiver Sterling Shepard to a non-contact left knee injury on Jones’ final throw of the night: an interception to Cowboys corner Trevon Diggs after receiver David Sills had slipped on his route.
“Definitely a gut-punch ending,” a despondent Barkley said. “It’s tough.”
Jones did all he could while facing consistent and intense pressure from the Cowboys’ pass rush. He ran for 79 yards and threw for 196 in the face of 17 quarterback pressures, 12 QB hits and five sacks by Dallas’ defense.
“I’ll be a little sore tomorrow, but feeling good,” Jones said after.
But Dallas (2-1) scored 17 answered points in a 10-minute second half stretch to overcome a 13-6 Giants lead.
And the Giants (2-1) lost for the 10th time in their last 11 meetings with the Cowboys dating back to the start of the 2017 season — despite Jones doing all he could.
“He went out there and played his b-lls off,” center Jon Feliciano said of Jones, who wears number 8. “We’ve got to have eight′s back. I don’t think we played particularly well up front and other places that are not my job.”
Cowboys defensive end DeMarcus Lawrence racked up three sacks of Jones in a one-sided battle with Giants rookie right tackle Evan Neal. Shepard and Kenny Golladay dropped key fourth-quarter passes to stall the Giants’ comeback effort.
And the Cowboys ran the ball for 176 yards on a Leonard Williams-less Giants defense, led by Tony Pollard’s 105 on the ground.
“Everyone knows we gotta help eight, especially when he’s out there doing what he’s doing: never giving up on the play, taking big hits, making plays with his legs,” Feliciano said. “He did everything he could out there. And this loss is on us up front; not on eight.”
Daboll’s team will look to rebound next Sunday in their third straight home game against the Chicago Bears (2-1). They’ll need to start faster, though.
The Giants haven’t scored a first half touchdown yet this season and have been outscored, 25-9, in first halves overall.
They’ll need to be more difficult to attack on defense, too. Pollard and Elliott combined for 28 carries for 178 yards, a 6.3 yards per carry average. They mostly attacked the edges of Wink Martindale’s defense, where rookie Kayvon Thibodeaux made a quiet debut.
“First and foremost we gotta stop the run on D,” safety Julian Love said. “It all starts there really.”
Jones’ offense got the ball back with a chance to tie on their own nine-yard line with 1:45 to play. Love and edge Jihad Ward made a key third-down stop on Cowboys tight end Jake Ferguson to force a punt.
“I had faith,” Ward said. “I was like, ‘There’s a lot of time on there.’ We just gotta beat these motherf—ers. Three more plays, shut this sh-t down.”
But Sills slipped on the fourth play of the drive. Diggs intercepted Jones’ pass. And Shepard collapsed to the turf on the opposite side of the field, leaving the Giants crushed in more ways than one.
Barkley had put the Giants up seven with a blistering 36-yard TD run with 5:31 to play in the third quarter. He followed strong blocking from his offensive line, broke an Anthony Barr tackle, juked safety Donovan Wilson and then bounced outside and outran Diggs to the front left pylon.
It was the first rushing TD allowed by the Cowboys’ defense this season.
But Rush and the Cowboys answered quickly with 75-yard and 89-yard touchdown drives to take command.
Elliott’s one-yard TD run through a Tae Crowder arm tackle tied it at 13 apiece with 27 seconds to play in the third. Then CeeDee Lamb made a one-handed, one-yard TD catch over Adoree Jackson on a fade for the 20-13 lead with 8:30 remaining in the fourth.
A fairly loud “Let’s Go Cowboys” chant broke out at MetLife Stadium after the score.
Lamb made four catches for 48 yards on the go-ahead drive, including a key four-yard catch on fourth and four from the Giants’ 41-yard line with 10:27 to play in a tie game. It was the right call by the Cowboys’ Mike McCarthy and Kellen Moore.
Drops by Shepard and Golladay gave Dallas the ball back, and a 28-yard punt return by the Cowboys’ KaVontae Turpin set up Brett Maher’s 44-yard field goal to put the Cowboys up, 23-13, with 5:58 to play.
“I’m beating myself up about it,” Golladay said of his drop. “I definitely wish I could have it back.”
The Giants’ Graham Gano answered that with a 51-yard field goal, his third of the game, at 3:37 of the fourth quarter for the final score.
But between Turpin’s punt return and Dorance Armstrong’s block of a Gano field goal try on the game’s opening drive, special teams cost the Giants six points in their seven-point loss.
Neal, the rookie, was one of the linemen who overpowered on the field goal block, as well.
“I just got to play better,” he said. “There’s no other way to call it.”
That went for almost every player on the Giants other than Jones on Monday. He can’t do it alone.
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