A Tale of Two halves – Giants vs Cardinals 

By Jeff Knapp

The Giants rolled into Arizona off the heels of a complete home opener embarrassment, losing to the Dallas Cowboys 40-0.

The 1st half looked precisely like the Cowboys game. By that, I mean that Jones threw for only 64 yards, was sacked once, and, because of horrible blocking by the O-line, was rushed throughout the 1st half of the play. Saquon Barkley only ran the ball six times for 24 yards. One of the passes thrown his way went right off his hands and was intercepted for a 34-yard return, which led to an Arizona Field Goal. 

In all, the Giants only gained 76 yards of offense, while the defense allowed Zach Ertz and Joshua Dobbs to do whatever they wanted. Dobbs went untouched the entire 1st half, and Ertz had four of his six receptions and 34 of his 56 yards in the 1st half.

I don’t know what happened in the locker room during halftime or what Coach Daboll said, but I’m picturing the locker room scene from Necessary Roughness when Robert Loggia’s character went off.

This was a completely different team in the second half. Although the defense never got a sack, and Kayvon Thibodeaux was only there in spirit, they held the Cardinals to 8 points and 123 total yards and forced them to punt three times on their 1st four possessions. 

The Giants offense came to life as Daniel Jones threw for over 250 yards and 2 TD in the 2nd half to go along with his 55 yards rushing (only four yards in the 1st half) 

Jones was able to spread the ball around to 7 different receivers, including Darren Waller for 76 yards and Isiah Hodgins for 40 yards and the game-tying TD (minus the extra point)

The bad news of the day came in the 4th quarter when Barkley was tackled oddly and hurt his ankle, which we hope is only a few games back as of this writing.

This 21-point comeback is their most prominent in the Super Bowl era and tied for the largest comeback in franchise history (1945 and 1949). New York’s previous largest comeback in the Super Bowl era was 19 points in Week 9, 1970, against Washington.

Next week, the Giants head to Santa Clara to take on Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffery, Fred Warner, and company. The 49ers will be a tough team to beat, so going in 1-1 is way better than heading in there 0-2 with the Seahawks, Dolphins, and Bill all coming up after that.