I think Victor Cruz and his drops were more costly than the penalties. I think letting Miles Austin catch that long touchdown on 3rd and 30 or whatever it was was costly. As an objective fan not rooting for either team, I thought there were a lot of flags but each was justified.

The problem is not necessarily with the penalties themselves. I think that like in basketball, if a certain player makes too many penalties then they should be evacuated from the game. There was really no penalty for all of the delay of game calls except for the five yards which was nothing to the Cowboys. If one of them was evacuated for committing too many penalties than it might have changed things. It seemed at one point that the Cowboys were also trying to commit penalties which would not have happened if a player could be evacuated.

"evacuated" i like the choice of words :p but your logic really maks no sense to me football is completely different from basketball and i can assure you the cowboys had no reason to try to commit penalties. and ejecting people for false starting or other minor penalties makes no sense.- my two cents

I understand what your saying but when something is happening much more often than it should be then something should happen. Whether it be ejecting* the player from the game or maybe giving the other team an extra timeout something has to change.

In the first game of a season, there's going to be timing issues resulting in false starts and delay of game moreso than later in the season. The more the team gets experience together, the less of those penalties happen.

And officiating is always the complaint of the loser.

I will agree with your second comment but false starts and offsides are penalties that they expect you to make playing freshman football. Part of the reason these athletes make so much money is so that things like this don't happen. I understand that it is the first game of the season but that was too much.

The more complicated the playbook and the less familiarity with your teammates, coach, and system, and also the stadium noise plays into it...the more likely those things become until the kinks get ironed out.

If you think college football outside of, say, the SEC (which I don't even like) has anywhere near the level of noise that NFL stadiums get up to...well...it doesn't. And the playbooks aren't even close to comparable in complexity or variety.

I don't quite understand what you are complaining about. The cowboys were penalized for the penalties. Every time they committed a penalty, they had to lose yardage which is critical for every aspect of the game. It's amazing how quickly your percentage drops on third down facing a four yard gap or a nine yard gap. That wasn't why they Cowboys won. The Cowboys won because the Giants played like crap. Plain and simple.

I thought the officiating was generally fine and that the penalties were not game-determinative. Dallas outplayed New York, and the right team won. (I say that even thought I picked New York to win in fantasy pick em.) New York really had no answer for Ogletree or Murray, plus the one killer TD completion to Austin. Romo did a good job reading the defensive set and audibling to something that worked. On the other side of the ball, Cruz's drops were terrible. Martellus Bennett looks like a good pickup.

Honestly though, the fact that when the Cowboys got a big run or a long pass it was always to the side of the third string rookie corner-back that was in. Maybe they played a bad game this week but once the Giants' players are back they are going to do much better.

Ogletree came out of nowhere that game. Overall, as a Giants fan, I can't say that I was too happy with that game though. As therhat said, we lost because of a third-string rookie cornerback (I believe two of the three TD's were to his side? Though, Rolle should have known the mismatch and done better in double coverage). Additionally, our offensive line needs a LOT of work in blocking, and we need help at RB (though I think the OL is the source of many of the problems).

But, Eli did well, our front four did well, and those are the two rocks upon which the team is built, so I'm optimistic about the rest of the season. Romo always will choke and fail to succeed when it counts most (in the season).

Though, I did have some issue with the penalties, as therhat mentioned. Officiating was pretty good, but each penalty Dallas committed in their last drive drained an extra 30 seconds or so from the clock. I believe it was done on purpose, since they didn't *need* to score on that final drive. So yeah, for false starts or something like that, I think the clock should be stopped. I don't really see any disadvantage coming from that, as teams who desperately need the clock stopped, probably also won't be able to easily sacrifice the 5 yd penalty. After all, a false-start is like a do-over, right? That means the "make-up" play should start at the same time as the original. Or, at least it should be that way imo.

@therhat: I totally disagree with ejection for committing minor penalties. False starts, delay of games, etc penalties ONLY hurt the team that commits them. It put Dallas at 3rd and long instead of 3rd and short on several occasions.

The fact that NYG couldn't hold them on those 3rd downs is the reason why they lost.

Also, false starts aren't only rookie mistakes. Granted, as you play more, you're less prone to making them, but it is going to happen. The crowds get loud, you will miss a cue, or take a defensive player or two jump as an indication that the ball was snapped.

Also, on the last drive, NYG, regardless of the penalties draining the clock or not, all they had to do was simply stop them on 3rd down, which they did not do.

I do agree with goldfinger, that penalties should stop the clock. I don't care if the clock is reset or not because eventually you'll get a 3rd and 50 and then when it's 4th and 50, you're punting from 40 yards behind the original line and thus giving your opponent good field position instead of pinning them back within their own 20.