Giants can’t succumb to overconfidence and expect to beat Cowboys

To a man, Giants players are staying as far away from the word as possible.

“You have to stay humble,” Saquon Barkley insisted.

“We have to play our best every week,” Daniel Jones asserted.

“Every week you try to go 1-0,” Dexter Lawrence vowed.

To a man — to a woman — Giants coaches are staying even farther away from the word as possible.

“Staying focused on the job at hand,” head man Brian Daboll said.

“We need to do what we do very well,” defensive coordinator Wink Martindale said.

To a man — to a woman — Giants fans are trying, very hard, to keep the word out of their minds, let alone their mouths, as hard as it might be.

Because for this week and this game, it is the worst of all possible words in the lexicon, save for perhaps “death” and “despair” and “pestilence” and a few notable others.

Overconfidence.

Yeah. That’s the one. That’s the killer. That’s the word that swims in the waters of hopefulness like a shark that hasn’t eaten in three months, looking to consume whole anyone who would succumb to its temptations.

The Dallas Cowboys may be the stated opponent Monday night at MetLife Stadium, but Overconfidence is the foe. Overconfidence is the enemy. Overconfidence is the silent assassin, and you know it as a Giants fans because inevitably, invariably, you’ve been involved in a conversation this week that featured something that looks like this:

“Look, we’re 2-0 and that’s great! But we haven’t won anything yet. We haven’t done anything yet. Sure, the Cowboys are the Cowboys, and they’re scuffling, they don’t have Dak and they don’t have much of an offensive line to speak of, and their coach always looks positively baffled on the sideline, like he’s trying to figure out trigonometry while also mismanaging the clock, and, sure, we COULD beat then, maybe SHOULD beat them and that WOULD make us 3-0 and …

And inevitably, invariably, that is followed by someone either texting “Shut up jinx!!!” or simply hanging up the phone, and maybe (in extreme cases) calling a priest to see if there’s a way to exorcise a telephone call or a text message (save the call: there isn’t).

See, there are many good things to the Giants being 2-0. There have been two victories — one in enemy territory, one in front of a renewed and re-energized home crowd — and there have been just enough good, winning plays executed by the lads in blue that, for the first time in too long a time, Giants fans are feeling happy and hopeful instead of turning their attention to the draft. That is the good stuff, and you wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But it’s so … well, easy, to allow overconfidence to seep into the equation. The Cowboys are damn lucky not to be 0-2. Their opening-game loss to Tampa Bay was a complete fiasco. The Giants are actually favored to win according to most betting lines. The Cowboys have Micah Parsons, which is a nice thing to have, but there’s only so much one player can do, especially when your QB1 is on the shelf for another month. Cooper Rush is the Dallas QB, and he’s 2-0 lifetime as a starter. But … he’s Cooper Rush.

“I see a guy that’s a starting quarterback in this league. Honestly, I do,” is what Martindale said Thursday, and that’s about as beautifully as a coach could possibly put it if he’s trying to lock down the shutters for overconfidence.

“And I made the comment just watching him and the decisions that he makes, I think he’ll have a long career as a quarterback in this league, and then he’ll be one of those cats that become an offensive coordinator and a head coach by the time he’s 38 or 39. That’s how it usually works.”

Oh, yeah. The DC is an old pro at this.

Of course, as good as 2-0 feels, 3-0 would be something else. And the truth is: 3-0 is within reach. If the Giants play as well as they did in the second half against Tennessee, as well as they did in the very beginning and the very end of the Carolina game, if …

And, well, that’s also it. The “if” part. You can’t just dissect the good parts of games and splice them into the next game. You have to actually play well, have to actually win the game. And the Giants, truth be told, really should win this game …

But what does an old jinx like me know? Call a priest.