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Mike Glennon looks downfield for Kenny Golladay … and Trevon Diggs plucks it out of the air.
A roar erupts, and a chant: “Let’s go Cow-boys.”
Saquon Barkley takes the handoff, tries to turn the corner, and is chased down for a 3-yard loss by Micah Parsons.
A Cowboys fan holds up a sign that Jimmy Johnson might have designed: “HOW ’BOUT THEM COWBOYS?!”
Jake Fromm drops back and before he can telegraph a throw, Parsons and Demarcus Lawrence bury him.
The television cameras flash to a jubilant Jerry and Stephen Jones high-fiving.
Dak Prescott hits a streaking CeeDee Lamb over the middle and he takes it to the house.
This is the anatomy of a John Mara nightmare.
No Mara Christmas Week.
Yet again.
Empty seats in December always signaled to his Hall of Fame father Wellington that it was time for dramatic change.
How will a preponderance of seats filled with raucous Cowboys fans impact his son?
“Nobody likes beating the Giants more than the Cowboys,” Lawrence Taylor told The Post, “and vice versa.”
What is likely and appears inevitable to unfold on Doomsday — remember when the Cowboys had that Doomsday defense? — will pierce the co-owner’s Big Blue soul because the Giants are his life.
Jerry Jones hasn’t won a Super Bowl since Jan. 28, 1996, so there’s that.
But Mara is trapped in the grips of a terrible slump, and he knows it. If he didn’t know it, all he would have to do is read his emails.
Or peer down on what used to be a field of dreams from his owner’s perch.
Picked the wrong head coach to follow Tom Coughlin. Picked the wrong GM to pick the coach to follow Ben McAdoo, and Judge and jury is suddenly out on whether he helped pick the wrong coach to follow Pat Shurmur. And with Daniel Jones (strained neck) possibly gone for the rest of the season, there is a troubling lack of convincing evidence that he picked the right quarterback to follow Eli Manning.
Here’s the only good news: He never pursued Urban Meyer.
Mara so badly wants to look at Joe Judge and see Coughlin or Bill Parcells. And Judge gave him reason as a rookie head coach, navigating his way through a pandemic. But the losing has become endemic, and Mara desperately needs to prove again to Giants fans, who haven’t witnessed a playoff win since Super Bowl XLVI, that he can be trusted with a cure.
Is Mara committed to Judge come hell or high water at the expense of a blue-chip visionary GM who would want his own head coach? Is changing head coaches for the third straight time after two seasons anathema to him? Has he already, or will he, decide that the devil he knows is better than any devil he doesn’t? Might he be inclined to try to split the baby by keeping Judge and letting him help choose a puppet GM who shares his philosophy?
It would be comforting for Mara, and probably validation for him, if Judge could somehow make a stand here, with this backup quarterback, against this swaggerlicious team, or against any team left on the schedule, and field a product that doesn’t resemble a champion only on Monday through Saturday but on Sunday for a change.
It would behoove Judge to win a damn game and avoid a six-game losing streak and finish 4-13, because no one will want to hear about Glennon replacing Daniel Jones or about the rash of injuries that helped sabotage the season, and Mara’s infatuation with this head coach would leave the already restless natives outraged.
The Giants Way has always been to let the season play out, and barring some unlikely mutiny on the bounty or full-fledged collapse or Pisarcik-esque calamity, my tea leaves see Mara holding firm and keeping the courage of his convictions that Judge is the right coach and Jones the right quarterback for 2022, and figuring out a compatible front office partner for Judge along the way.
It’s fourth-and-2 at the Dallas 41 … Cowboys 17, Giants 0, third quarter … and Judge decides to punt. The boos are not deafening only because 50 percent or more of the boobirds are home.
On the last day of the 2020 regular season, the Giants ended a seven-game losing streak to the (Andy Dalton) Cowboys and eliminated them from the playoffs. The Cowboys will get their chance to eliminate the Giants on Sunday with a Saints win and 49ers tie.
It was 40 years ago today when Joe Danelo booted a 35-yard field goal in overtime that beat the Cowboys at Giants Stadium and got Mara to his first playoffs since 1963 … when he was 9 years old. From the New York Times: “The victory before a frenzied crowd of 73,009 at Giants Stadium enabled the Giants to end the regular season with a 9-7 record, their first winning season since 1972.”
The affection the “Once a Giants Always a Giant” Giants and “Once a Giants Only a Giant” Giants have for Mara does not waver, however.
“The owner has done a great job marketing that brand … it’s like a family,” LT said.
Unfortunately, it’s like a dysfunctional family at the moment.
“It’s sad,” LT wrote in a text, “but they will be back. They got to try to finish strong, look each other in the eye and ask each other did they give themselves and each other the best chance to win?. If the answer is yes, so b it. If the answer is no, you need to start working sooner and harder. Giants pride will only last so long.
“I’m sure WE WILL B BACK!!!
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