Rich: The Giants PUNKED the Dallas Cowboys In Week 1

Everyone spent the offseason asking how John Harbaugh would transform the Giants and how fast the change would show up. It took four quarters.

"Check the box," Rich said.

The Giants looked well coached and well conditioned. They looked smart. They were stout, they were physical, and on offense they were unstoppable at stretches. That is not a sentence anyone has written about this team in a while.

Jaxson Dart was superb. Cam Skattebo looked like the Skattebo everybody expected. Malik Nabers did get the start and looked the part.

The defense is where Rich kept getting stuck, because of how the roster now looks physically. Abdul Carter was doing Abdul Carter things, the third overall pick from the previous draft, now paired with Arvell Reese, the fifth overall pick from this year's. Two of the best defenders the Big Ten has sent to the league in the last couple of years, on the same front. Add Tremaine Edmunds and Brian Burns and the size and speed start to look unfair.

"They looked like the Monstars from Space Jam."

Put it together and you get the phrase that has followed Dallas around all week.

They punked the Dallas Cowboys.

Rich meant that technically, not just as an insult. Getting punked is what happens when one team finds the weakness, hits it, and then keeps hitting the same spot knowing full well that the other sideline sees it coming and cannot do anything about it. The second half was exactly that. New York understood where Dallas was soft and went back to it over and over, which Rich compared to a certain party at Nakatomi Plaza and how well the repetition worked out for the guy who came out to the coast to have a few laughs.

That did not go over quietly at the desk. One voice took umbrage at the word punked, having spent months caping for the Cowboys.

"You got punked, sir," Rich said. "You and I are going to have a conversation."

The reply was that he had been advising tempered expectations for months, which is true, and which is also not much comfort.

The coaching staff deserves a share of this. Matt Nagy and Greg Roman have both been maligned, Nagy in Chicago and Roman in San Francisco and Baltimore, where he worked under Harbaugh before Harbaugh told him he was out and replaced him midstream with Todd Monken, who is now running the Browns. The coaching community, as Rich put it, tends to understand its own.

What they have done with Dart is the story. He was smart, dynamic, decisive, and correct from the neck up, including on called runs, which is the part that would have been unthinkable a year ago. This was a quarterback people worried would make the wrong decision while running and end up in the medical tent instead of on the scoreboard.

"Every single time he's taking off, I'm thinking to myself, he knows exactly what to do," Rich said.

The two imports from Baltimore are doing real work too. Patrick Ricard and Isaiah Likely are helping in the run game, in protection, and in the make this throw game. New York barely needed Odell Beckham Jr. Malachi Fields, the rookie, played 50 snaps in his first game, and Rich described him as a player who looks like a tight end and runs you down like a wide receiver.

Harbaugh's postgame answer explained the culture faster than any of it.

"It's number one because it's the one right now," he said. "My dad always says that. He'll say it in the car on the way home. He'll say, John, you've never had a better win than that. He says it every time, and I'm going to tell you I think this time it might be true."

The summer padded practices were the tell. Harbaugh said at the time he was doing it to make the team more physical. Dart's answer suggests the room bought every word.

"I just think that we have so much respect for Coach Harbs, and this team will do whatever he says, because we have all the faith in him that he's going to put us in the best situation to win," Dart said. "The identity of the team starts at the top, and it starts with how he's conducted himself, with how he's created a tough team. We want to take that on our shoulders and we're bought into what his plan is week in and week out. We're definitely happy to get it for him."

Rich did note the Giants caught a couple of breaks. Caleb Downs came free at Dart and the ball popped straight up into the arms of a New York offensive lineman. Skattebo dropped one that landed upright and bounced back to him.

"Luck is the residue of design sometimes, man."

The bigger claim is the one Rich is willing to make out loud. Looking at what the Giants did to Dallas, and at how the Eagles and Commanders game went, this team has a shot to win the division.

Proving it starts immediately. Week 2 is Monday night against the Rams, who lost Myles Garrett to injured reserve, news that broke during the pregame shows. Los Angeles is back in its own time zone and will want that one badly.

After that the schedule opens up some. Tennessee at home, then Arizona at home, which is no pushover. A trip to Washington. The Saints at home, which Rich expects to be a lot of fun if New Orleans plays the way it did in Detroit's fourth quarter. Then Houston.

The formula is not complicated, which is the point. Play smart, protect the quarterback, let the quarterback keep himself out of harm's way, let Nabers and Skattebo and Likely make plays, and let that defense come at you.

"That's a recipe. Well done."