The Cowboys won thanks to the Giants’ terrible late-game decisions

The New York Giants just lost to the Dallas Cowboys. This in and of itself isn’t particularly notable: they’ve now lost five straight matchups to Dallas over the span of three years -- or 1,050 days, if you’re counting. It’s the way they lost it this time that has people talking.

The Giants used great red zone defense and huge turnovers to take a 10-point lead on the Cowboys in spite of big disparities in total yardage and time of possession. They led, 23-20, with under two minutes to go, and were driving the ball to the doorstep of Dallas’ end zone.

At this point, the Giants didn’t need to play brilliantly to beat the Cowboys. They didn’t even need to score. They just needed not to play like idiots. Unfortunately, poor execution -- and even worse game management -- lost the game for New York.

Let’s break down the three big things that went horrifically wrong as the Giants handed the game to the Cowboys:

With 1:43 to go, the Giants are up, 23-20, have the ball on the Cowboys’ 1-yard line and Dallas has no timeouts. The obvious thing to do is run the ball. Either you score a touchdown -- essentially ending the game -- or you get tackled in the field of play, which takes 40 seconds off the clock, leaving the Cowboys less than a minute to score.

The Giants decide not to run, instead opting for a play-action pass. This by itself isn’t the worst thing; they’re playing off the Cowboys expecting the run and maybe it leads to somebody getting open.

This should work if Eli Manning knows he’s supposed to just eat the sack and take the loss of yardage.

Manning does not know this:

In this situation, the loss of 7 yards doesn’t matter much; your kicker can still hit a 25-yard field goal. The time on the clock does matter. But Manning opts to throw the ball away rather than sliding down and taking the sack, a move that would’ve allowed the clock to run.

Sure, it’s tough to prioritize like that in the heat of the moment, but he has to. The quarterback has to know that in this situation, he should go down in the field of play rather than throw it away. And if he doesn’t know that, his coaching staff has to make sure he does know that.

So now we have 1:37 left, Giants up, 23-20 and the Cowboys don’t have any timeouts.

Manning’s throw was stupid, because there should be a minute left. But it did keep the ball at the 1-yard line, three feet away from Dallas’ end zone.

If your offense gets those three feet, it’s a two-score game, and the Cowboys essentially can’t win. Game over. If your offense doesn’t get those three feet, the Cowboys need to go 99 yards to win the game and about 70 to tie it. Both are good scenarios.

Instead, the Giants kick the field goal, putting them up six. This doesn’t take a Cowboys win out of the equation: The Cowboys were capable of winning with a touchdown before, and are still capable of winning with a touchdown. The only difference is now they need a TD or bust, since a field goal does nothing. But instead of getting the ball at the 1, they get it at the end of a kickoff return, which turns out to be the 28-yard line.

So instead of forcing the Cowboys to go 99 yards to win or 70 to tie, the Giants played it safe and gave them a scenario where they needed to go 72 yards to win. That situation is slightly better, but to get that slightly better opportunity, the Giants passed up the chance to score a dagger of a touchdown. Passing up that opportunity just doesn’t seem worth it.

Let’s turn to our math friends: The 4th Down Calculator at Advanced Football Statistics says the Giants had a 94 percent chance of winning if they went for it and a 83 percent chance of winning if they kicked the field goal. So kicking almost tripled the Giants’ probability of losing, boosting it from six percent to 17 percent. That’s not good!

It was my opinion that this was also stupid.

SB Nation presents: Don’t trust anything you learn from Week 1