Monday, November 9, 1998

Cowboys defeat Giants

By John Harper

New York Daily News

(KRT)

IRVING, Texas - On the day that all hope was lost, the Giants actually came away feeling good about the fight they put up against the Cowboys. And that may be more of a commentary on the '98 season than their sorry 3-6 record.

The great expectations of a division champion have been reduced to hollow talk of playing tough. Sunday's 16-6 loss to the Cowboys left the Giants with nothing else to cling to as any chance of a grand turnaround vanished.

Even Jim Fassel had to admit as much.

"Realistically, this puts us out of it," he said of playoff contention. "Mathematically it doesn't but realistically it does."

There could be no ignoring the reality of it all on this day - in particular, the cold fact that the Giants simply didn't have the talent to win a game that was there for the taking.

For the second straight week the defense did only enough to put the burden of winning on the offense. Not only did it allow Emmitt Smith to gallop for 163 yards - "You saw a bad display of tackling," said Corey Widmer - but it again went an entire game without forcing a turnover.

The offense, meanwhile, responded in some ways as the running game awakened, but it couldn't take control of the game.

Brad Maynard, so good all season, hurt the cause by punting the ball short and low to Deion Sanders, and Chris Calloway lost a costly fumble. Finally, the glaring lack of big-play talent couldn't overcome such hurdles and doomed the Giants to a frustrating loss.

"We didn't make plays," Fassel said. "We had opportunities to do better, because we made the effort. But you've gotta make some plays."

Yes, if the Giants can't win on a day when they run the ball for 159 yards, a day when Gary Brown breaks big gainers of 38 and 34 yards, well, when are they going to win?

Of course, that was the irony on Sunday: The Giants had their best rushing day of the season, yet they couldn't punch the ball in for a touchdown from the 1-yard line late in the first half when they could have taken the lead.

It may well have been the turning point in the game. Trailing 6-3, the Giants went down the field on one of their most impressive drives all season, moving from their 15-yard line to a first down at the Cowboys' 2 on a 17-yard pass from Danny Kanell to Joe Jurevicius.

Then it got ugly: Brown went wide left and lost a yard, but because the Cowboys had 12 men on the field, the Giants moved a yard closer and retained first down. This time Brown went up the middle and got slammed for no gain.

On second down Fassel called a play he put in especially for this game - a play-fake to Charles Way that was supposed to allow backup tight end Al Pupunu to slip into the end zone. Pupunu got held up at the line, however, and Cowboys safety Darren Woodson blitzed from the blind side and sacked Kanell for a seven-yard loss.

A subsequent swing pass to Way gained two yards and the Giants settled for a Brad Daluiso field goal that tied the game 6-6.

Afterward, Fassel indicated it was up to Kanell to "feel" such a blitz and "dump the ball" to avoid the sack.

"It's a hard play for a quarterback," Fassel said, "but it can work."

Kanell, meanwhile, said, "I thought the back side would be protected."

In any case, the Giants had more chances in the second half. They had another good drive going to start the third quarter, but after making a 23-yard catch at the Cowboys' 35-yard line, Calloway fumbled the ball away.

The Giants didn't cave there, but soon enough the combination of poor punting by Maynard, strong running by Smith, and one drive's worth of precision passing by Troy Aikman allowed the Cowboys to put the game away.

And while several Giants spoke of how encouraged they were by the effort, especially after last week's debacle against the Redskins, it was left to Kanell to put the state of the '98 season in perspective.

"We're going to fight hard and try and make a miracle happen," he said. "If we win all our games we're still going to need a miracle. But we're going to try."

Sunday was proof that, in 1998, trying hasn't been nearly enough.

(c) 1998, New York Daily News.

Visit the Daily News online at http://www.nydailynews.com/

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.