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Cowboys lost the race against the clock

By GARY MYERS

New York Daily News

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - The clock was running, not only on this game, but the Giants' season as well. The Cowboys were racing down the field, the fans were counting down the seconds, the Giants were hoping it would hurry to :00 before Troy Aikman could spike the ball.

We are used to the Cowboys beating up the Giants, especially in their first meeting of the season. Who can forget 35-0 here two years ago in the Monday night opener? Or 27-0 down in Dallas in the second week last year? This was a statement game: The Cowboys are on the way back to the pack and the Giants would like everybody to believe they are on the way up.

If the Giants lost this game to a Dallas team begging to be beaten, the rest of the season would have been simply for draft position, a familiar theme the last few years.

But the race was on.

Dallas was out of timeouts. The Giants were ahead, 20-17. The 'Boys had the ball at the Giants' 49 with 18 seconds left. The defense had closed off the sidelines, leaving Troy Aikman no choice but to throw it down the middle. Aikman hit tight end Eric Bjornson right down the middle. He didn't stop until he gained 32 yards to the Giants' 17.

"I was counting," Jason Sehorn said. "I was willing that time to go a little bit faster."

If Aikman could stop the clock and the Cowboys hit a 34-yard field goal to send the game into OT, you know Dallas was winning this game. Its once explosive offense, now reduced to a mere whimper, would have rallied for 11 points in the last two minutes.

Aikman slammed the ball down, but the Cowboys were penalized for a false start when Erik Williams was not set before the snap. Game over. The pass to Bjornson actually picked up too many yards: It was too far downfield for the Cowboys to get set.

"There was nothing I could do except try to get the ball hiked and hope the guys were set," Aikman said.

The backdrop to this game is the Giants are now set for a major quarterback controversy. Danny Kanell came into the game in the second quarter after Dave Brown went out when he reinjured his pectoral muscle in the second quarter. His numbers were ordinary, but the offense just had more zip and looked sharper. The Giants are going nowhere with Brown, who was 2-for-7 for eight yards before he left. And now it's time to find out about Kanell.

Either way, the defense will carry them through this season. In the last three weeks, it has given up just two touchdowns.

"If they don't score, they don't win," Sehorn said. "If we take care of our side of the football field, we'll be just fine."

And against Dallas, the Giants' defense scored the game's crucial touchdown. Safety Tito Wooten dashed in front of Aikman's pass intended for Michael Irvin and raced 61 yards for a touchdown to give the Giants a 13-9 lead late in the third quarter after the first five scores of this game were field goals.

Maybe it's the backup quarterback syndrome, but Kanell energized the fans and energized the offense. The best thing he did was throw two passes on which Cowboys cornerback Kevin Smith was called for pass interference when it didn't appear either was going to be complete. The first set up a field goal, the second the clinching TD.

But he didn't throw an interception. He didn't fumble. "I think he did great," Brown said. "The best thing he did was manage the game well."

Jim Fassel did not want to discuss next week's starter in Arizona. He wants to find out about Brown's injury. But it was interesting that he never said, if healthy, Brown would start. If Brown is healthy and Fassel starts Kanell, it would make Brown's future past this season with the Giants very tenuous. If Fassel switches, it's so he can find out about Kanell because he already knows enough about Brown.

"I'm going to weigh it," Fassel said. "I'm not going to get into that now. There is a lot of things I'm going to look at."

The one thing that cannot be overlooked is how a team responds to the quarterback. And the Giants responded to Kanell.

This may have been the Giants' most significant victory since 1993. Fassel is working hard to wipe out the memories of the last two seasons, when the Giants put together back-to-back losing seasons for the first time since 1982-83. So much has been said about Bill Parcells trying to rid The Same Old Jets mentality. Fassel's job is not that much easier. Since the 1990 Super Bowl year, the Giants are only 45-51. The Same Old Giants.

"Like I talked to this team (Saturday night) - the No. 1 thing I have battled through from day one is the absolute belief that we are going to win," Fassel said. "And you don't change that overnight. There's got to be an absolute belief you are going to win. It's got to be all encompassing."

So when the clock was running down, and the Cowboys were racing down the field, the first major building block in Fassel's program was on the verge of being tumbled. Pregame talks can be inspirational. And the Giants could claim they were motivated by a derisive cartoon in the Dallas Cowboys Weekly. But at some point, you need a quality victory to back it up.

And that's what they got on Sunday. "If you don't believe you can do it, you can't do it," Sehorn said.

They were able to keep the struggling Cowboys offense out of sync. They made big plays. They won back their fans, for now, in front of the fifth largest Giants crowd in the stadium's history. They survived David Patten muffing the kickoff after the Cowboys' only TD because Tyrone Wheatley recovered it.

And then the clock ran out just in time.

(c) 1997, New York Daily News.

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