Giants Week 1 Recap - "Rough Start"

Kevin Ogletree had the game of his life. 

The defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants stepped onto MetLife Stadium field Wednesday night with the hopes of picking up right where they left off last season. The crowd was electric and the team was fired up, everything was set up to "Bridge the Gap" between last season and this one. The Dallas Cowboys had other ideas.

The first half started off very slowly with not much scoring as the Cowboys took a 7-3 lead into halftime. Even though not much happened, a huge turning point in the game occurred. Giants linebacker Michael Boley picked off a Tony Romo pass and brought the ball all the way down to the Cowboys 2 yard line. Things were rolling for the Giants, but the turning point actually put the game in favor of the Cowboys. The Cowboys showed tremendous resiliency with a goal line stand, limiting the Giants to just a field goal. Totally taking the wind out of the Giants sails. The Cowboys gained a bunch of confidence after that stand and ended up scoring on 4 consecutive drives and it turned out to be too much for the Giants to overcome.

The main difference in this game was the emergence of undrafted wideout Kevin Ogletree. Ogletree recorded 8 catches for 114 yards and 2 touchdowns. He constantly found the soft spots of the Giants coverage and Romo threw many quick hitters to Ogletree in a bunch of backbreaking situations. Two instances in particular were the touchdown before the half when the Giants pass rush forced Romo out of the pocket and he floated a touchdown over a linebacker for a 10 yard touchdown. The other was with just over 2 minutes remaining, Ogletree ran a quick slant on the Giants' 5th option of their battered conerback core, Justin Tryon, for a game-sealing 1st down.

There wasn't too much for the Giants to build off of in this game. Eli Manning made many good throws but he also missed on a few throws that he always makes. Also, last year's star wideout Victor Cruz looked terrible in his first game after his monster year. He had 3 very blatant drops. Hopefully this was all just first game kinks, but the most concerning stat of the game was that the Giants only had 2 sacks and none came from their highly touted defensive ends. Jason Pierre-Paul, Justin Tuck, and Osi Uemenyiora were virtually ineffective and they need to perform up to expectations if the Giants plan on winning. Without their pressure, the beat up Giants secondary will have to guard for a longer amount of time.

If there was one thing that the Giants can take from this game was the play of tight end Martellus Bennett who had a solid game in his first game in Giants uniform. Bennett had 4 catches for 40 yards and a pretty touchdown late in the game. He will need to continue to be big in the red zone and on 3rd down for Eli, just like Jake Ballard was last year and Kevin Boss before him.

One Last Thing: Keep Calm. It is, in fact, only Week 1, and since no other games were being played today felt like it had an added significance, but it didn't. The Giants will see the Cowboys again later in the season, but for now, we have 11 days to prepare for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That game is a must win already even though it's early, because the Giants schedule is a VERY difficult one.