GLENDALE, Ariz. — For much of Sunday afternoon, it looked like Dallas 40, Giants 0 last Sunday night was no aberration at all.
It looked like the damn truth.
The Giants fell behind the Cardinals 20-0 at halftime and trailed 28-7 in the third quarter at State Farm Stadium and looked like they were writing a script for a historically poor start to a season.
And then: Some way, somehow, they came alive.
Suddenly, a team that looked like it was playing with no urgency and — worse — no heart, was playing like it was trying to save its season.
And what do you know: The Giants did.
They rallied from an abyss that felt equal parts disgusting and hopeless and overcame the Cardinals 31-28.
The winning points came on a 34-yard field goal by Graham Gano with 19 seconds remaining to give them the utterly improbable but euphoric victory.
That field goal gave the Giants their first lead of the season, capping a stirring 24-point second-half comeback. It was the first time the Giants overcame a deficit of 20 or more points to win since 1950 against the Baltimore Colts.
But it was the body of work and anatomy of the comeback that was so impressive.
The Giants weren’t just losing to the Cardinals, they were being outclassed, outworked and out-executed by a team considered to be one of the worst in the league.
A team that many believed was tanking the season for the top 2024 draft pick.
A team with a quarterback — Joshua Dobbs — playing on his sixth NFL team in seven seasons, having started only nine games before Sunday.
Instead, for most of the game it was the Giants who looked like the worst team in the league now, so soon after last year’s unexpected feel-good playoff season under new head coach Brian Daboll.
The Giants’ defense was being made to look inept by Dobbs, who led Arizona to scores on five consecutive offensive possessions en route to that 28-7 lead early in the third quarter.
The Giants’ offense looked like it was lost, with quarterback Daniel Jones, the ink on the $40 million-per-year contract he signed in the offseason not having yet dried, the second-best quarterback on the field.
And it wasn’t even close.
Tight end Darren Waller, who was supposed to be a “match-up nightmare” for opposing defenses, wasn’t a part of the offense until he was, catching six passes for 76 yards in his first impactful moments in a Giants uniform.
For the second consecutive week, Giants running back Saquon Barkley was on the wrong end of a soul-crushing Jones interception that wasn’t Jones’ fault.
With the Giant trailing 17-0 in the second quarter, Barkley had a Jones pass graze off both of his hands and into the arms of Cardinals’ cornerback Jalen Thompson, who returned it 35 yards.
Barkley, meanwhile, for several moments after the play knelt on the 35-yard line looking a combination shell-shocked, infuriated at himself and in disbelief considering that last week against Dallas he had a pass bounce off of him and returned for a touchdown.
The Cardinals converted that turnover into a 44-yard Matt Prater field goal to give them a 20-0 lead.
The Giants entered the halftime locker room trailing 20-0, which means for the season they were trailing 60-0 at that moment.
In NFL history, only the 1989 Pittsburgh Steelers began a season allowing more points before scoring their first points. It, too, marked the first time the Giants failed to score a single point in the first six quarters of a season since 1934.
This is where we were at — reaching back nearly 90 years to compare bad to bad and worst to worst in team history.
The Giants, to their credit, woke up after halftime, scoring quickly on their first possession of the third quarter when Jones connected with rookie receiver Jalin Hyatt for 58 yards, which led to a 14-yard Jones scoring run just 1:17 into the second half.
So, at 5:43 p.m. and with 13:43 remaining in the third quarter, the Giants scored their first points of the season. That was the good news. The bad news was they still trailed 20-7 and their defense was showing no evidence that it could stop a nosebleed.
Because the Cardinals answered by jammed the ball down the throats of the Giants’ defense on the ensuing possession and took the 28-7 lead on a Dobbs touchdown pass to Marquise Brown.
The Giants cut it to 28-14 on a 1-yard Barkley scoring run in the third quarter.
Then came a dynamic catch and dive score from Barkley on a gotta-have-it third-and-goal from the 9-yard line. Jones threw it to him in the flat and he dove to the pilon for a touchdown to cut the Arizona lead to 28-21 with 8:51 remaining in the game.
Of course, in a bizarre game like this became, Barkley had to be helped off the field with an apparent ankle injury with 1:08 remaining in the game.
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