The New York Giants once again face the Cowboys in week one of the NFL regular season in a game that most fans will either be looking forward to or dreading depending on their confidence level when it comes to the Giants’ chances against one of their old time rivals.
There’s been a number of frustrating losses to Dallas in the last couple of years and the team will look to change the trend that continued in week one of the 2018 season when the Cowboys managed to pull out a win by a touchdown after controlling much of the game. This year, though, the Giants might have a boost in the form of a key player being missing from the Cowboys lineup.
Ezekiel Elliot has been one of the top running backs since entering the league and has been one of the main competitors for Saquon Barkley in terms of rushing yards and touchdowns, but Elliot is right now stuck in a contract holdout that saw him miss the first week of the preseason. If this continues, missing the first week of the regular season isn’t out of the question at all, and with the Cowboys lacking a main replacement, it might just give the Giants the edge in their week one meeting.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones claims to not be bothered at all by the holdout.
“Not at all. You know it is a marathon. It’s a long season, it’s a long career and so you don’t let a week or a month, you don’t let any of that, bother you and it goes on all the time,” Jones said during the first week of the preseason.
But saying that it’s a long season implies that the holdout might very well last into the season., rather than just the preseason games that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
“I know for a fact before Jerry Jones leaves time and go to eternity, he wants to drink the sweet nectar of a championship again. And, that nectar he will not partake in without Ezekiel Elliott,” former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin said to TMZ. But that doesn’t mean a deal will be reached soon.
The Giants will have their own challenges going into week one including a four game suspension for Golden Tate. It won’t decide the game on its own, but the Cowboys losing their top running back to a contract holdout for this game might just shift things in the Giants’ favor – something the team could desperately use now.