Five winners and five losers as the Cowboys cruise to 5-3 on the season

The Dallas Cowboys returned from their bye on Monday night and thankfully, despite a rough start, were victorious!

Halfway through their 16 games the Cowboys are 5-3 with yet another primetime game coming up as they’ll be on Sunday Night Football this week against the Minnesota Vikings.

How did they do against the Giants, though? Who were the better performances from? As always we’re discussing the biggest winners and losers from the game, let’s begin.

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Winner: Blake Jarwin

He is the Giant killer. Look at Blake Jarwin go, man.

From 2018’s regular season finale to now (three games) Jarwin has hit 200 yards and scored five times against the Giants. He is their kryptonite.

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Winner: Jaylon Smith

Leighton Vander Esch missed the game with an injury (hopefully he’s back soon), and that left Jaylon Smith alone for an entire contest for the first time in a while. The godbacker had perhaps his best game of the season as he generated pressure consistently, picking up a sack in the process while giving a shout out to Dez Bryant.

We saw the Jaylon Smith we were promised against the Giants and that’s a very good thing. Perhaps the bye week was good for him in getting rest and putting himself back in the proper position to be the player that we all know he can be.

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Winner: Xavier Woods

Cowboys fans everywhere spent last week crossing their fingers for Jamal Adams and in their first game since, Xavier Woods announced himself in a different type of way. You want turnovers? He can make that happen.

Jeff Heath left the game with an injury issue, but Xavier Woods more than stepped up. If the Cowboys can get this type of play from their free safety week in and week out, they’ll be cooking with gas.

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Winner: Dak Prescott

This was gorgeous.

QB1.

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Winner: Michael Gallup

There is just something different about him.

Touchdown of the year so far.

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BONUS WINNER: Jourdan Lewis

This man has deserved to play for so long. He’s a turnover machine.

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Loser: Tony Pollard

Just about everyone here has banged the drum for Tony Pollard to be more involved in every Cowboys win, and it seems like the coaching staff heard our cries. The thing is... Pollard didn’t exactly do a lot with his opportunities.

On the opening kickoff the rookie took the ball out of bounds way too early and set up his offense in poor position. He managed to later lose a ball that was thrown to him near the endzone and shortly after he dropped a screen pass on third down.

There are always going to be rookie warts. Pollard had his share on Monday night.

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Loser: Randall Cobb

Normally guys are labeled “losers” for the performance that they had in the game. We’re including Randall Cobb here, but it’s more about what he lost than anything. He had another touchdown wiped away by penalty.

He also got called for a blindside block. Hopefully things get better.

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Loser: Tyron Smith

There were a couple of holding penalties against the best left tackle in football and that just seems to be happening all too often.

It seems like opponents know how to manipulate the situation so that they can draw a penalty against him. Somehow, some way, the Cowboys need to figure out a way to neutralize that because it’s a bit of a thorn in their side.

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Loser: NFL officiating

How was Xavier Woods called for unsportsmanlike conduct here?

Will Hernandez also got away with a shove on Jaylon Smith shortly after, and a billion different things after that. I’m not one to believe that referees have it out for a particular opponent, but I think we all agree that they’re calling all games poorly this season.

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Loser: Discipline

The Cowboys knew that they were going to be playing in a hostile environment and obviously knew that they were coming off of their bye. They looked somewhat flat in a lot of ways, but thankfully they managed to power through.

If this game had been against a more talented team it’s likely that things would have gone a different way. There needs to be some reality checking happening around The Star this week because the mistakes that happened in the second game at MetLife can’t happen again.