NY Giants are coming to Dallas on Sunday

I’m trying to transition out of preseason mode and into actual-season mode. The best way to do that is to talk about the upcoming season opener. That would be the one Sunday night against our NFC East rivals, the New York Giants. A little affair that will take place at Texas Stadium in front of the whole country with early bragging rights in the division on the line. This is an important game for the Cowboys, you just can’t give away a home game against an opponent inside the division.

So what have the Giants been up to this offseason? I don’t really know. I’m the first to admit that in the offseason I get tunnel vision, the other franchises only matter when they intersect with our draft plans or our free-agency plans. Once the season starts, that all changes, I watch as many games as I can and always scout the upcoming opponent from their game the previous week. I watch all the highlights, read the box scores and play fantasy football, so I know who is doing well and who isn’t. But in the offseason, everybody’s drinking kool-aid so it’s hard to get a true read on things unless you watch a team day-to-day. So for all things New York Giants, the first place I go is to Big Blue View run by ETVal. We’ll be doing some cross-posting during the week but if you’re looking for Giants stuff, start there.

I also did a quick spin around the New York and Dallas media for news on the Giants. I needed to get familiar with them again. Instead of me reading somebody else’s articles on the Giants and fraudulently using their opinions as my own on this blog, I’ll just point out some things you might want to read about further.

The Cowboys think they have to stop the Giants running game to be successful. Now that’s not very original, but it’s a formula I always believed in. What is kind of original is that the Giants ground attack won’t be led by Tiki Barber. That guy tormented us, so I can say I am very happy he is gone. In his place, though, we get the untested, but very large, Brandon Jacobs. The guy looks like he has skills to go with his big body, but we need to see it as the main guy. Todd Archer checks in with this piece on Brandon Jacobs.

Of course, Tiki isn’t giving his former team any love this offseason. There was the well-publicized exchange of words with Eli Manning, and now he just took a shot at Tom Coughlin.

But the big news of training camp was the absence of Michael Strahan who was engaged in money-struggle with the team. Well, he ended his holdout and is now practicing. Strahan doesn’t know if he’ll suit up on Sunday, he says that’s the coach’s decision. So far, Tom Coughlin isn’t tipping his hand. He said it might be until Sunday before they know.

If he does play on Sunday, he’ll be lining up in a defense that the Cowboys should recognize, but not as the Giants defense, but the Eagles defense. Seems the Giants went out and hired the Philadelphia Eagles linebacker coach, Steve Spagnuolo, to be their defensive coordinator. We know what the Eagles liked to do; blitz, blitz, and blitz again. Now, they had personnel built for that scheme with good corners and good safeties. The Giants lost safety Will Demps to injury for the season, and CB Sam Madison won’t be playing in this game, at least that’s what the New York media is saying. With Madison out and some inexperienced safeties, we’ll see how much they choose to blitz on Sunday.

Here are a couple of more random notes on the Giants and Cowboys.

I’ll be doing some more research about the Giants and what to expect on Sunday throughout the week. I’ll also be doing some work with ETVal over at Big Blue View.

One more note, the Giants can’t be all bad because they have three Georgia Tech players on their roster: starting safety James Butler, LB Gerris Wilkerson and TE Michael Matthews. Yellow Jackets crush Fighting Irish 33-3, move to #21 in the country. Rock on.

Add your own stuff about the Giants if you got any.