Evan Engram wouldn’t take the bait.
He wouldn’t admit that Sunday is an opportunity for payback on Jayron Kearse, the Cowboys safety who punched Engram in the face after Dallas’ 44-20 win in October.
“I’m not looking at it like that,” Engram said this week with a smile. “We’re gonna go out there and play football.”
There is most definitely bad blood here that could spill over, however, dating two months back to what Engram mocked as Kearse’s “baby punch” in an interview with the Daily News.
The last-place Giants (4-9) obviously are overmatched by the first-place Cowboys (9-4) in the talent department.
All the flu and COVID-19 sweeping through the Giants’ East Rutherford, N.J., facility puts them even more squarely behind the eight ball on Sunday at MetLife Stadium.
But Joe Judge’s team intends to put up a fight, and they have first-hand experience with one of Dallas’ biggest weaknesses: a lack of composure.
Cowboys defensive tackle Trysten Hill got suspended two games for punching Raiders guard John Simpson in the face following Las Vegas’ win on Thanksgiving Day.
Then Dallas right tackle La’el Collins was ejected from last week’s win over Washington for throwing a punch at defensive end William Bradley-King after a hit on Dak Prescott on the sideline.
Kearse wasn’t fined for his punch of Engram, which FOX and NFL Films said they did not have on camera. Video of Hill’s punch, on the other hand, went viral and cost him checks.
The Giants haven’t forgotten, though. There’s a good chance Dallas’ early-season disrespect came up in meetings this week, and the Giants’ feelings certainly have changed since October.
Right guard Will Hernandez told The News the week after Kearse punched Engram: “I wish I would have been there. You know what? It’s great, because we play them again.”
Judge said that week: “We’ll see these guys again.”
Safety Jabrill Peppers, now sidelined for the season, was more to the point.
“I mean it’s Cowboys-Giants. F—k ‘em. They hate us, we hate them,” Peppers said.
Judge also signed former Cowboys linebacker Jaylon Smith on Friday, adding an emotional player with an ax to grind against Dallas for cutting him earlier this season.
The Giants by no means intend to lose their own composure, like rookie receiver Kadarius Toney did in the mid-game Week 5 melee down in Arlington, Texas.
But let’s face it: this rivalry needs some sort of juice from the Giants to be a rivalry again.
There is no rivalry anymore, even though Judge snapped a 7-game skid in the head-to-head series with a Week 17 win last January.
The Giants have lost eight of their last nine to Dallas from 2017 through this fall. Their only win late last season came with Andy Dalton at quarterback for the Cowboys.
Dallas QB Dak Prescott has an 8-2-0 record, 20 touchdown passes and five interceptions in 10 career meetings with the Giants, including eight straight wins.
Jason Garrett, oddly, was the head coach of those Dallas teams decimating the Giants in recent years, but once he joined the Giants, he faced his former team only three times (1-2) before getting fired by the Giants in November.
Interestingly, Sunday will be the first Giants-Cowboys game without Garrett involved since 2006. He took the Dallas offensive coordinator job in 2007 and quickly rose up the ranks to head coach by midseason 2010.
The Giants have won two Super Bowls in that span to Dallas’ zero, of course, but those championships feel like a lifetime ago given the franchise’s failings in recent years.
Corner James Bradberry admitted on Thursday that it’s difficult for the Giants not to hang their heads coming off two straight losses, knowing their official playoff elimination could come as soon as this weekend.
“I would definitely say it’s hard, but you’ve got to just wake up and put one foot in front of the other and attack the day,” Bradberry said. “I just try to win the day, try to get a little bit better every day, and whatever cards you’re dealt with on Sunday, play with them.”
The cards the Giants have been dealt on Sunday is a Cowboys team that isn’t playing its best but still walks tall when they face this NFC East foe.
Back in October, Engram told The News about how Kearse’s punch happened.
“I walked up on him. He walked up on me kinda, saying some stuff. He threw the punch,” Engram said. “We had some guys there that separated us, so it was kind of boom, boom.”
“He stole one off, and everybody was there to separate us. So I kinda just let it go,” he added. “I dapped up some of my old coaches and friends on the other side [afterward] and went into the locker room.”
Engram didn’t retaliate because he didn’t want to get fined. He also knew they had another game on the schedule. That game is Sunday, the Giants’ final chance this season to take pride in dethroning a Dallas team that loves to look down upon them.