Giants stock report: Whose is up, down after Week 1 win over Cowboys? - Giants Wire
The New York Giants opened the John Harbaugh era with a 28-20 win over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night at MetLife Stadium, snapping a home-opener drought that dated back to 2010 and starting the regular season 1-0.
Cam Skattebo finished the opening drive with a three-yard touchdown run. After Dallas tied it, Jaxson Dart found Isaiah Likely for a 15-yard score just before halftime, then hit Likely again from two yards in the third quarter. Devin Singletary’s nine-yard catch in the fourth made it 28-14, and the Giants closed it out after the Cowboys cut the deficit to eight.
Dart completed 23 of 29 passes for 230 yards and three touchdowns without an interception. New York piled up 394 yards, converted nine of 11 third downs and held the ball for more than 34 minutes.
Monday night’s trip to Los Angeles now looms, with the Giants facing the Rams on national television.
Whose stock is up and whose is down after the Week 1 victory? Let's take a look.
The Giants have areas in which they'll need to improve, but that's a conversation for another time. The most important statistic will always be the final score, and in his Big Blue debut, Harbaugh delivered. In doing so, he bucked several ugly trends, including Week 1 futility at home, repeated primetime embarrassment, and longstanding Cowboys dominance in games that actually matter. Whether or not the Giants are a true contender in 2026, they started things off on the right foot under Harbs.
Tracy is doing himself no favors with repeated mistakes dating back to the preseason. He lost another fumble on Sunday night, and again, it came inside the red zone. The error ended a potential scoring drive and positioned Dallas to head into halftime breathing a sigh of relief. Luckily, the Giants' defense bailed Tracy out with an interception, which then led to a scoring drive while he rode the pine.
His fumble aside, Likely proved himself to be the game-changing target so many anticipated he would become. He made big play after big play, hauling in all eight of his targets for a team-leading 78 yards and two touchdowns. His ability to line up at multiple positions allowed other receivers to get open and fueled an impressive offensive performance. A sleeper no more.
Fair or unfair (and we'll get to that momentarily), Phillips was called for three defensive pass interference penalties on the night. They ended up being some of the biggest plays for Dallas in Week 1, and helped keep the game closer than it should have been.
Dart was not perfect on Sunday and took another big hit from an unblocked defender, but those occasional errors aside, he played a sound game. He had nice touch on his throws and appeared to be in command of the offense. Most importantly of all, he protected himself on designed runs and even drew a late hit when he stepped out of bounds. In total, he completed 23 of his 29 pass attempts for 230 yards and two touchdowns, adding 54 yards on the ground.
This is not to absolve the Giants of some of their disciplinary issues on Sunday night, but the referees were atrocious (they also got a big penalty against the Cowboys wrong). There was at least one DPI penalty they completely got wrong, and then allowed CeeDee Lamb to get away with an obvious OPI. And those are just a small handful of examples. The NFL can't allow this to continue year after year.
