Behind The Box Score

The new Cowboys stadium held its first regular season game last night, and boy was it a great one. Just for the opposing team. Eli Manning led the Giants (2-0) on an 11 play, 56 yard drive that chewed up the final 3:40 of the fourth quarter clock, capped off by a game-winning 37 yard field goal by Lawrence Tynes, ending the game with a 33-31 Giants victory. “Those are situations you like to be in – you like to have a chance to win the game in the fourth quarter,” said Manning. “We had a feeling it was going to come down to that. We knew what we had to do. We knew we had to get in field goal range. Those are situations we practice all the time.”

With 105,121 attending the game, including ex-President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and LeBron James. the stadium set an NFL record for attendance, breaking the old record of 103,467 set on October 2nd, 2005 in Azteca Stadium. Everybody makes a big deal because we spoiled their little party,” defensive lineman Justin Tuck said about the first game in the 1.2 billion dollar stadium. “Every other game we play in the NFC East will be just as big.” The opening of the Cowboys Stadium marked the 20th stadium to open since 1992, with the home team winning 11 of those games.

The game had been hyped up as a September Super Bowl, with both teams coming in 1-0. With the win, New York gets to take the early lead in the division, ahead of the rest by one game. “For all the hoopla that was made of the game – the second game of the season Super Bowl – it’s huge. But at the end of the day the biggest thing is we’re 2-0 in our division. That’s critical. We played a very intense game on the road in front of 100,000-plus and with everybody yelling at us. We’re excited about it,” linebacker Antonio Pierce said.