Cowboys at Giants: Time, live streaming, how to watch, key matchup, pick for ‘Monday Night Football’

Week 3 of Monday Night Football pits two old NFC East rivals against each other for the first time this season. The New York Giants, shockingly one of the league’s last unbeaten teams, host the Dallas Cowboys, who clinched a surprise win over the Cincinnati Bengals last week.

Both teams arrive with reinforcements on Monday night, with key players such as Michael Gallup and Kayvon Thibodeaux returning. Dallas is hoping to recoup Dak Prescott for some time over the next few weeks, but will keep rolling with Cooper Rush in the middle in the meantime. New York entered the Brian Daboll era with early success and will look to continue the good times against a team that has struggled to defeat them in recent seasons.

Can the Giants go undefeated or will the Cowboys pull off the excitement on the streets? We’ll find out soon enough. Before we break down the matchup, here’s how to watch the match.

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• When: Monday 26 Sept | 8:15 p.m. ET
• Where: MetLife Stadium (East Rutherford, NJ)
• TV: ABC/ESPN | Electricity: fuboTV (try for free)
• Consequences: CBS Sports App
• Opportunities: giants -1; O/U 39

Featured Game | New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys

When the cowboys have the ball

The Dallas offense looked far more competent last week than it did against the Buccaneers in Week 1, although that’s not saying much. Cooper Rush has stepped in for Dak Prescott 2-0 for the past two seasons but as we wrote last week, Rush wasn’t nearly as good as the surface numbers and perfect balance sheet would have you believe. Here is an excerpt:

Dallas, for example, has scored exactly 20 points in each of Rush’s two starts, and that’s usually not good enough to win in 2022 — even if you have good defense like the Cowboys have the past two seasons. Dallas was the No. 7 defense in the NFL a year ago and was still conceding 21.1 points per game. The average team scored 22.9 points per competition. If you only get 20, you will lose most of the time. (The Cowboys averaged 30.2 points per game in Prescott’s starts this year and last, including that year’s season-opening stinker against Tampa Bay.) It’s a testament to Dan Quinn’s defense that the Cowboys were able to walk away in Rush with two wins starts by keeping their opponents down to just 16 (Vikings) and 17 (Bengals) points.

The Cowboys’ average of 1.90 points per drive in Rush’s starts would have seen the team drop from No. 1 in the league a year ago to No. 12, and the percentage of the team’s drives that ended in a punt would have gone from 35% below Prescott (1% better than league average, 13th in the NFL) to 43% below Rush (30th in the NFL), according to TruMedia. According to TruMedia tracking, Rush also missed 20% of his shots. That would be the lowest grade of any quarterback if Rush had thrown enough passes to qualify, while Prescott’s 10% mark ranks 11th best of 32 such passes. Rush also took more sacks than Prescott (19% of dropbacks under pressure vs. 15%), despite being pressured less often (25% of dropbacks vs. 31%)…

Rush was also the beneficiary of several unbelievable happy jumps. A key pass on his game-winning drive on Sunday was deflected on the throw, only managing to travel down about 15 yards and fall into Brown’s hands. He nearly intercepted a tight end screen meant for Dalton Schultz last season, but the ball instead bounced off three players and resulted in a seven-yard gain. And the biggest play of his game-winning drive a year ago saw Amari Cooper pull off a ridiculous circus catch with a terribly subdued deep ball…

Then there’s the sales problem. Rush has officially lost a fumble and thrown just one interception on his two starts, but he’s made several more attempts to give away the ball. He was lucky he didn’t get hit twice with a pick six against the Bengals on Sunday, and he could have been caught four or five times against Minnesota last season. This level of interception luck isn’t particularly sustainable, especially given his track record of off-target throws.

Rush has to be better against the Giants than he was against the Bengals last Sunday or he’ll flip the ball a few times. You can’t keep flirting with disaster and get away with it.

The Giants are expected to have career-first rookie edge rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux on the field Monday night, and if he’s healthy he should pose a challenge to the Cowboys’ offensive line, which did quite well against Cincinnati last week well asserted. The Giants will likely try to pair him with rookie Tyler Smith quite a bit, but Smith has bested Terence Steele so far this season; New York could be better off if Thibodeaux charges from the right side of the Dallas offensive line. (Azeez Ojulari is also expected to play and could also benefit from the Steele match.) The inside duo of Leonard Williams and Dexter Lawrence can also cause problems, but the Cowboys are stronger in the middle (where Zack Martin still plays). than at Tackle at the moment.

Bringing Michael Gallup back to his knees, even for a limited number of snaps, should help the Cowboys create some more leeway in the passing game. They’ve given the defense almost no reason to respect their air attacks on the field so far this season, and Gallup are the top vertical threat on the roster. His presence should open things up for CeeDee Lamb below and for Dalton Schultz if he fits. New York’s defensive backfield offers multiple attacking surfaces for an accurate quarterback, and if Rush can deliver on time and on target, Dallas can successfully move the ball.

With Prescott out, the Cowboys will likely at least try to lean on their running game. That’s a tricky one if they continue to rely on Ezekiel Elliott as their primary ball carrier – which seems likely. Tony Pollard has consistently outperformed Elliott for more than three seasons and is by far the more explosive player. The only people who haven’t figured it out yet are the Cowboys coaching staff and front office.

When the Giants have the ball

The focus here needs to be how the Giants can prevent Micah Parsons from destroying their entire offense like he did with Dallas opponents in the first two weeks of the season.

Parsons is third in the NFL with 13 presses — and he’s yet to play his third game of the season. He created pressure on a whopping 22% of his pass rush snaps, which is by far the best mark out of 113 players who have rushed the passer at least 50 times. The distance between him and second place is equal to the distance between second and 24th place. He also averaged just 2.01 seconds to get to quarterback in games where he was under pressure, best among all players with seven or more presses.

Dan Quinn moves him all over the formation to isolate the best possible matchup, so don’t expect him to keep going straight for Andrew Thomas, for example. He’ll see plenty of snaps storming against Evan Neal on the opposite flank and also against New York’s centre-back. How this group explains the Parsons threat (and whether they are still able to block the other rushers like Demarcus Lawrence, Dorance Armstrong, Dante Fowler, Sam Williams and Osa Odighizuwa) will be a major factor in whether the Giants are able to find offensive success. Let Parsons and co. face Daniel Jones and he’s probably ready to win the ball. Even without Jayron Kearse to safety, the Dallas secondary attacks the ball when it’s in the air and has the ability to turn overs.

Given all of this, it makes sense that Brian Daboll, Mike Kafka and the rest of the coaching staff try to minimize Jones’ role on offense as they did in the first two weeks of the season. They did better in Week 1 than they did in Week 2, thanks largely to Saquon Barkley’s great day running the ball. The Cowboys were injured on the ground by Leonard Fournette in Week 1 and can be prone to power runs, especially around the perimeter. If Barkley can find the kind of success he found in the opener, the Giants can play offensively if they want. When they have to put the game on Jones’ shoulders, they seem to struggle – especially given the state of their wide receiver corps, which looks set to do without Kadarius Toney and has seen Kenny Golladay plummet. Sterling Shepard is the most reliable of the remaining wideouts and will need to exploit Jourdan Lewis at man coverage if the Giants are to find ways to move the ball through the air.

Prognosis: Giants 17, Cowboys 14