Football Fan Site

Turns out that the overtime win over the Falcons wasn’t a sign of better things to come for the Giants. With a shameful performance on the road in Denver on Thursday evening, the Giants fell two games behind the Cowboys in the NFC East, and there’s a good chance they’ll be a game behind the Eagles by Sunday evening.



The Giants can forget about a division crown. At 6-5, they would not go to the playoffs if the season ended today. Facing a Broncos team that had dropped four straight, the Giants didn’t even show up in the first half. The offense put up 38 yards of total offense in the first half and the Broncos took a 16-0 lead.



The Giants are a team without an identity at this point. They can’t run the ball with Brandon Jacobs. And even when Danny Ware broke off a nice little run, he was stripped of the ball and the Broncos recovered. The secondary continues to have trouble making plays on the ball, although Brandon Marshall made a couple of incredible one-handed catches. The Broncos’ final touchdown to Brandon Stokley came against busted coverage. You couldn’t tell whose fault it was because there wasn’t a Giants defender within 10 yards of Stokley as he raced toward the end zone.



Defensive end Osi Umenyiora spent quite a bit of energy hollering at his teammates on the sideline. And Tom Coughlin had a bewildered look on his face throughout the evening. The Giants are a very average football team right now. They basically went through the motions on a night when they needed a win to keep pace in the playoff race.



It’s hard to believe how far the Giants have fallen since their 5-0 start. They’ll have a chance to climb back into the playoff picture against the Cowboys in 10 days, but they have a lot to work on between now and then. They allowed a quarterback with a gimpy ankle, Kyle Orton, to carve them up for 245 yards and a touchdown. And when he finally made a mistake in the second half, the Giants could only respond with a field goal.



It was a meek performance in a big spot. I’m sure someone played well, but I certainly couldn’t tell it from watching the highlights. We’ll have more on this game in the morning.

Kyle Orton drove Denver on six scoring drives, Matt Prater kicked four field goals and safety Brian Dawkins led a ferocious defense 48 hours after calling a players-only meeting, and the Broncos beat the New York Giants 26-6 Thursday night.

The NFL Network accidentally aired a vulgarity yelled by Denver Broncos coach Josh McDaniels as he chastised his players on the sideline of their Thanksgiving night game against the New York Giants.

ARLINGTON, Texas — Jason Witten has missed one game in his career, and that’s because his broken jaw had been wired shut in his rookie season in 2003. But when he sprained his left foot in the first half of Sunday’s win over the Redskins, there was a good chance he was going to sit out the Thanksgiving game.



And that’s why Witten visited offensive coordinator Jason Garrett’s office numerous times this week to make sure he wasn’t left out of the game plan. The Pro Bowl tight end left Cowboys Stadium in a walking boot Thursday evening, but not before he had five catches for 107 yards in the Cowboys’ 24-7 win over the Raiders.



“He was adamant right from the start that he was playing,” said Garrett. “He must have come by my office or circled around my office probably around 20 times during the last three days. ‘Coach, you know I’m playing.’ I kept telling him, ‘Look at the game plan. There are a lot of Witten plays in the game plan. Don’t worry, we know you’re playing.’ It’s just what he’s all about. That guy tries to be great every day, every play and with everything he does.”



The Cowboys overwhelmed the Raiders’ talented defense with big plays in the running and passing game. Their most catalytic wide receiver, Miles Austin, returned to form with seven catches for 145 yards and a touchdown, but Witten remains Tony Romo‘s most reliable weapon. His average-per-catch is down this season, but he’s still the player defensive coordinators worry about the most.



And I think his willingness to play through a painful foot injury meant a lot to an offense that had scored a combined 14 points in the previous two games. He’d never admit it publicly, but the thought of playing a game with Martellus Bennett and John Phillips riding herd over the team’s much-publicized double-tight end formation had to scare Garrett. Witten has a calming influence on Romo and this offense as a whole.



After the game, Witten said he felt guilty about keeping athletic trainers Jim Maurer and Britt Brown at work so long this week. He admitted that he was nowhere close to being ready to play Monday, but by Tuesday he started to feel some improvement. Coach Wade Phillips asked Witten several times during the week how he was feeling and told him he needed an honest answer.



“Today during pregame he said he didn’t really feel it,” Phillips said. “He said he was ready to play. He said he wouldn’t lie to me, so I think it wasn’t quite as bad as we first thought. He and Tony are a heck of a combination.”



Added Romo: “The fact that he is as competitive as he is makes him twice the talent. … He was playing. I told him he was playing.”



Romo and Witten know all too well that the big-boy portion of the schedule is about to arrive. The Cowboys may have a head of steam heading into December with an 8-3 record, but they know it’s a month that has haunted them for years. Since taking over as quarterback in 2006, Romo is 5-10 in December and January, including two playoff losses. Dating back to the Chan Gailey glory years (1999), the Cowboys are 17-29 in December.



Unfortunately, you can only play the Raiders once every few years. After a 10-day grace period, the Cowboys will play the Giants, Chargers and Saints. At the end of that stretch, the Cowboys will either be ready to roar into the playoffs or searching for wild-card crumbs. Some players claim that this team is different than the ones in the past that have struggled during the holidays, but there’s only one way to find out.



“They are a close-knit group,” Phillips said of the ’09 edition. “Our guys are not selfish. They are very focused. I could tell it this week and I think they will continue that. They are the kind of group you love to coach. It is not a big ego group, but it is a group that pulls together and pulls for each other offense, defense and special teams.”



Perhaps Phillips is onto something. Coming off a 13-3 season in 2007, last year’s team had a sense of entitlement unparalleled in this league. On more than one occasion, I heard players talk about wanting to flash forward to the playoffs. This team has attempted to stay in the present, and with eight wins, that strategy seems to be paying off.



When the Raiders briefly tried to make a game of it in the second half, Romo connected with Witten on a crossing route that went for 44 yards and set up the Cowboys’ third touchdown. As he raced down the middle of the field, there was no way to detect that he’d barely been able to put any weight on his left foot three days earlier. It was one of five plays for the Cowboys that went for more than 40 yards, and it ended any hope of a Bruce Gradkowski-inspired comeback.



I’m pretty sure the Cowboys had enough talent to beat the Raiders without Witten, but it’s a chance they never wanted to take.

DENVER — The Denver Broncos are not dead.



They are still alive in the AFC West race and in the AFC wild-card chase.



Had Denver lost to visiting New York on Thursday night, the season would be all but lost. There would have been little chance Denver could have been able to recover from a 6-5 record and a fifth straight loss.



Denver entered the Thanksgiving night game fully aware of that fact. The Broncos played with desperation and had one of their best games of the season. The Broncos looked like a 6-0 team, not a 6-4 team.



The Broncos made the big play at the right time on both sides of the ball, just as they did in the first six games. They looked dominant against the befuddled Giants.



One game doesn’t make everything right. But it definitely keeps Denver alive and feeling great about itself heading into the final five games of the season.

New Orleans is 10-0 and threatening, along with Indianapolis, to become the only team to go 16-0 in a regular season since the 2007 Patriots. Fittingly, New England stands in the Saints’ way on Monday night.

Opposing players and coaches are up in arms over verbal jabs made by Denver coach Josh McDaniels before the Broncos’ game against the San Diego Chargers on Sunday.

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) -Terrell Owens has been called “a clown” on national television and rendered nearly irrelevant as part of an anemic offense. So when the Bills receiver stopped after making a catch in practice last month and spoke, it seemed like more of a joke than a vow.