2026 Season | Week 1 | Gameday Chatter Thread | Cowboys @ Giants | 09/13/2026

Texas Ace said:
The one bad throw he made wasn't a poor decision so much as a lack of arm strength to get the ball all the way out of the field of play.
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It was a poor decision and mental error in that for some reason he threw it ten or 15 yards past the line of scrimmage. If he throws it OB a lot shorter, he doesn't have to heave it so hard just to get it out of bounds.
 
Cotton said:
I know last night sucked ass, but I'm willing to give Parker more than one game before I bail on him. And, I'm not saying that you are implying we should give up on him just yet, but there is chatter amongst the fans already, and they need to step back from the ledge a bit.
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We're stuck with him probably for the season at least. So we have no choice as fans but to stick with him and give him more than 1 game. But the performance was so bad last night that he has a long way to go to win me back over, particularly since he doesn't have a history as a DC to point to as confidence that he is capable.

We'll see, but I'm very very skeptical now.
 
Chocolate Lab said:
It was a poor decision and mental error in that for some reason he threw it ten or 15 yards past the line of scrimmage. If he throws it OB a lot shorter, he doesn't have to heave it so hard just to get it out of bounds.
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Very poor decision and poor throw given that we lost by essentially 1 score.
 
Genghis Khan said:
Very poor decision and poor throw given that we lost by essentially 1 score.
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An equally poor decision was Schottenheimer taking a timeout before the third down there.

We had the ball at our 40, about a minute left, all three timeouts, the Giants had two timeouts, it was 3rd and 5.

If our offense had been going up and down the field all day, sure, I get being aggressive and trying to conserve time to go all the way for a TD. But realistically with our offense kind of sputtering, the amount of time on the clock and score of the game, you don't call a timeout there.

Just take a little time and run a play on a normal cadence, and if you get the first down you'll have the ball near midfield with about 35-40 seconds left and all three timeouts. You have time to run at least 4 more plays before attempting a FG, with a kicker you're comfortable kicking from 60, you'd only need about 10 more yards to be in realistic range.

If you don't get the first down the Giants will only have about 35-40 seconds left and you're punting (or after the INT they're starting on about their own 45). Without the INT you're leaving them very little chance at a FG with no timeout, but after taking the timeout you're still leaving them about 50 seconds and two timeouts.

It's a minor thing in the grand scheme, but it's small things like that where I'm seeing that he's really only a very average HC at absolute best.
 
It's not that I'm shocked by what happened last night because I'm not. I'm fully aware of all the possible pitfalls that comes with being a Cowboys fan and all of the things that can go wrong under Jerry Jones' Cowboys.

And I knew there were a lot of question marks coming in to the season as well, so losing last night or even getting off to a slow start isn't and wouldn't be a shock to me.

But seeing how unprepared they were last night coupled with how terrible they looked on defense is hugely discouraging.

My logic coming into this the season was this -- we're much better on paper. And while I'm not a huge fan of Schotty as a coach and recognize that Parker is a first-time DC, we did have good seasons under Garrett and ANYTHING was going to be an improvement over Eberflus so we should have enough in place to at least match some of those Garrett teams that had success.

But what happened last night is scary because it made you (or me, I should say) realize that maybe this coaching staff consisting of so little experience and so many unknowns could lead to a disastrous season no matter how much better we might be on paper from a personnel standpoint.

Again, if we lose to the Redskins on Sunday, I think this season is going to go to shit because I don't think we have the experience nor the know-how on the staff to right the ship.
 
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Simpleton said:
An equally poor decision was Schottenheimer taking a timeout before the third down there.

We had the ball at our 40, about a minute left, all three timeouts, the Giants had two timeouts, it was 3rd and 5.

If our offense had been going up and down the field all day, sure, I get being aggressive and trying to conserve time to go all the way for a TD. But realistically with our offense kind of sputtering, the amount of time on the clock and score of the game, you don't call a timeout there.

Just take a little time and run a play on a normal cadence, and if you get the first down you'll have the ball near midfield with about 35-40 seconds left.

If you don't get the first down the Giants will only have about 35-40 seconds left and you're punting (or after the INT they're starting on about their own 45). Without the INT you're leaving them very little chance at a FG, but even without the INT you're leaving them about 50 seconds and two timeouts.

It's a minor thing in the grand scheme, but it's small things like that where I'm seeing that he's really only a very average HC at absolute best.
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I agree with you and I don't think it's a minor thing. That swing of a TD at the end of the half was enormous. Playing conservative was probably the best bet and try to pin them deep if we have to punt. I believe it was 7-7 at that point. We weren't desperate for a score there a punt wouldn't have been the end of the world.
 
Genghis Khan said:
I agree with you and I don't think it's a minor thing. That swing of a TD at the end of the half was enormous. Playing conservative was probably the best bet and try to pin them deep. I believe it was 7-7 at that point. We weren't desperate for a score there.
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That sequence was the game to me right there.

If we go into the half with the lead, I think we do just enough to escape New York with a win.

Instead, we got the shitshow of a second half that we all witnessed.
 
Cowboysrock55 said:
Like where are the guys in the secondary going, hey dude you have to cover that. Like that just should never happen.
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There were plays where Bland was just bailing 20 yards downfield in a quarters or cover-3 type look despite only having one target on his side of the field, leaving about 15 yards of space between the underneath defender (about 5 or so yards past the LOS) and himself.

That's not how that coverage is supposed to be played when all the other targets are on the other side of the field, but it was that same mistake 2-3 times in a row that directly led to the TD right before halftime. That sequence right before halftime was just as bad as that sequence with the flat passes to the RB over and over, it just wasn't quite as obvious.

The secondary was as lost as they ever were last year, and I think Bland might actually just be a moron in anything other than straight man coverage.
 
boozeman said:


This is when I turned the game off.
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Equally as bad were the last 3 plays to end the first half that resulted in a 14-7 Giants lead.

They completed 3 straight chunk plays through the air where there wasn't a defender within a mile of the receiver including the TD.

WTF was everyone doing last night?
 
Texas Ace said:
But what happened last night is scary because it made you (or me, I should say) realize that maybe this coaching staff consisting of so little experienced and so many unknowns could lead to a disastrous season no matter how much better we might be on paper from a personnel standpoint.

Again, if we lose to the Redskins on Sunday, I think this season is going to go to shit because I don't think we have the experience nor the know-how on the staff to right the ship.
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This is basically where I'm at.

I think the offense will end up being fine but it's going to be a carbon copy of last year unless the defense shapes up in the next week or two, and against a more difficult schedule than last year.
 
Texas Ace said:
But seeing how unprepared they were last night coupled with how terrible they looked on defense is hugely discouraging.
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Exactly. I did think we were going to lose but mostly because of the combination of the cheese eating we were showing combined with the Giants showing signs of frothing at the mouth. That's usually a bad combination for us.

But the way we looked in losing is hugely concerning. It was really bad.
 
Texas Ace said:
That sequence was the game to me right there.

If we go into the half with the lead, I think we do just enough to escape New York with a win.

Instead, we got the shitshow of a second half that we all witnessed.
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They leaned on us the entire second half and bled the game away. It was a very smart strategy and unfortunately Harbaugh is easily the best coach in the division.
 
Genghis Khan said:
Exactly. I did think we were going to lose but mostly because of the combination of the cheese eating we were showing combined with the Giants showing signs of frothing at the mouth. That's usually a bad combination for us.

But the way we looked in losing is hugely concerning. It was really bad.
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I think I said before the game that if we had lost a 24-20 type game where we just didn't play great, the GIants did a little more, we made a few more mistakes, etc., I wouldn't have really cared. And yes I realize the final score wasn't that far off of that, but the eye test was way different.

And part of that assumed the defense would be just average or maybe below average, with the offense kind of sputtering as they start slow.

Never in a million years did I think the defense would be as bad as anything we saw last year.

Seeing an avalanche of undisciplined penalties to start the game after leading the league last year, showing that our HC is basically just an empty suit, was the cherry on top.
 
The only positive I can take from the defense is that it looks like they're at least capable of forcing turnovers.

We forced what? Like 4 fumbles?

Pretty unlucky to only end up with 1 one of them.

And then you have what should have been an INT that hit Durant square in the chest and bounced off.

So hopefully that's a sign that this unit is going to create a turnovers this season.....but even that won't matter if we're basically trotting out another version of last year's defense.
 
Texas Ace said:
The only positive I can take from the defense is that it looks like they're at least capable of forcing turnovers.

We forced what? Like 4 fumbles?

Pretty unlucky to only end up with 1 one of them.

And then you have what should have been an INT that hit Durant square in the chest and bounced off.

So hopefully that's a sign that this unit is going to create a turnovers this season.....but even that won't matter if we're basically trotting out another version of last year's defense.
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They played really aggressively for the most part, I'll give them that, and it should pay dividends if they can actually start playing fundamentally sound at some point.

It was just too aggressive at times to the point of being mindless, like Ezeiruaku busting a simple play action rollout that Dart took for about 15-20 yards because Ezieruaku was chasing what he thought was a run all the way to the opposite sideline when he was damn near the numbers on the opposite side of the field.

That's my issue with the defense, they were consistently giving up huge chunks of yards against plays that were offensive staples in 1995 like play action bootlegs and RB draws.
 
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