Cowboys at Giants: A fast facts and stats game preview for Week 1

Let’s take a look at some facts and stats ahead of the Cowboys at Giants on Sunday Night Football. DraftKings Sportsbook has the Cowboys as 3.5 point favorites heading into the game.

The Cowboys lead the overall series 73-46-2. The last time they met was on November 24th of last season, a game the Cowboys won 28-20, completing the season sweep. Dallas has won 11 of the last 12 games played in this series including the last four.

Dallas and New York have opened a season against each other 11 times, with the Cowboys winning 10 of those. The one defeat was in 2016, Dak Prescott’s rookie season.

The Cowboys come into this game averaging more points per game (28.4) than any other team over the last two years when Dak Prescott plays. Of course, that was with Kellen Moore as the offensive coordinator, we’ll have to see how much that changes with Mike McCarthy taking over the offense.

The Cowboys have added Brandin Cooks on offense, and have a fully-recovered Michael Gallup, too. They tried to get faster on offense with players like Cooks, and adding KaVontae Turpin to the receiver rotation. Plus, Tony Pollard is the lead back with Deuce Vaughn in reserve.

Dallas will be facing a pretty stout Giants’ defensive line that includes Dexter Lawrence, Leonard Williams, Kayvon Thibodeaux, and Azeez Ojulari. But the Giants secondary is young and inexperienced, so the Cowboys may want to make their yards through the air if their pass protection can hold up. Interestingly, though, last year the Giants had a poor rush defense.

Dak Prescott is gunning for an interesting stat. With just 53 passing yards in this game, he’ll have 25,000 for his career. Along with Aaron Rodgers, they will be the only quarterbacks to reach that number and also 1,500 rushing yards in their first 100 games. Prescott is also 27-7 against the NFC East in his career.

New York’s head coach Brian Daboll was 2022’s NFL Coach of the year after he revived the Giants last season and led them into the Divisional Round of the playoffs. That was the first time the Giants had reached the playoffs in six years.

Trevon Diggs has put together some fine work against the Giants in his time. In six games, he has 24 tackles, 10 pass breakups, and three interceptions that includes a pick-six.

CeeDee Lamb has 37 catches for 494 yards against the Giants. That’s more receiving yards than he has against any other team.

Tony Pollard will be RB1 for the first time to start a season for Dallas. He’s had pretty good luck against the Giants, carrying the ball 84 times for 404 yards, that’s a 4.8 ypc.

2002 season

The Cowboys were third in scoring for the 2022 season at 27.5 points per game, and that was with Cooper Rush playing five games. The Giants ranked 15th at 21.5 points per game. On defense, the Cowboys were sixth in the league allowing 20.1 ppg. The Giants defense was 20th at 21.8 ppg.

Where the Giants really excelled in 2022 was with their rushing offense. They ranked fourth in the league and much of that was due to running back Saquon Barkley and quarterback Daniel Jones. The Cowboys were vulnerable to the run last year, ranking 22nd in the league in rushing yards allowed. We’ll see if the addition of Mazi Smith and a fully-incorporated Johnathan Hankins can help with that.

The Cowboys can also look for help on special teams. they were 11th in kickoff return average, and eighth in punt return average. The Giants ranked 23rd and 29th in those categories, respectively.