On Thursday night, the Cowboys will face the Giants in New Jersey. It will be a new experience for the Cowboys.
On Tuesday, Ed Werder of WFAA shared a tidbit from the Cowboys’ P.R. department. The Week 4 game at New York will be the first time the Cowboys play a road game with only three days between games.
Every other NFL team has done it at least six times.
The reason is simple. The Cowboys have hosted one of the Thanksgiving games for decades. With the Lions, the Cowboys have played more Sunday-to-Thursday games than any other team. With the Lions, the Cowboys have annually hosted those games.
Only last year did the NFL embrace the possibility of teams playing multiple Thursday games, after playing on Sunday. And, last year, the Lions went on the road in Week 4 to face the Packers, before hosting the Packers on Thanksgiving.
That same dynamic applies this year. Cowboys at Giants in Week 4 on a Thursday, Giants at Cowboys on Thanksgiving.
Here’s the difference. We don’t recall the Lions pointing out that they’ve never had a road game with only three days between games. Are the Cowboys trying to build in an excuse preemptively, in the event that they lose to the Giants?
We’ve never had to do this before. Everyone else has done it at least six times. That’s why we lost.
It will be a big deal if the Cowboys lose, and few will blame it on the fact that they had to play on the road with only three days between games. They’ve beaten the Giants 13 of the last 14 times they’ve played. And Dallas is favored on Thursday night by six points.