To the benefit of us all, the Giants and Cowboys are building a nice little tradition of ending their Week 1 matchups with staggering displays of situational unawareness. Yesterday’s lowlight reel participant: WR Terrance Williams, who cut back upfield on the game’s final play rather than get out of bounds.


The Giants survived for the 20-19 win—despite pretty good play from Dak Prescott, Dallas is now 1-14 in the Romo era when any other QB has started—but it was a close one. With 12 seconds left and the Cowboys on their own 46, Prescott found Williams at about the Giants’ 48.

Williams said he was aware of the time and the situation, but he thought he could make a move, pick up a few more yards and then get out of bounds. So it wasn’t a brainfart, just a generally poor decision.

“I was trying to make the first guy miss, and then just dive out of bounds, but it didn’t go as planned. I should just have followed the rules and gone out of bounds.”


Jerry Jones said after the game that Williams had been taught to run out of bounds. “It’s a well-practiced situation,” Jason Garrett deadpanned. And take a look at Dez Bryant: it seems everyone knew the smart move save the guy with the ball.

In Williams’s defense, if he risked (and lost) the chance at a final field goal try for a matter of yards, those were important yards. Dan Bailey is great, and had already nailed kicks of 56 and 54 yards earlier on Sunday. But had Williams immediately made for the sideline, it would have been about a 62-yarder for Bailey, six yards longer than his career high. Far from a gimme; also far from implausible. We’ll never know.