ARLINGTON, Tex. — To watch a game with all its pregame and postgame trimmings in Texas, in Jerry Jones’s Temple of Excess known as AT&T Stadium, is to highlight what is deeply entertaining and not so modestly depraved about the N.F.L. game.
The Cowboys-Giants match, or what you could see of it beneath the blinking electronic scoreboard that hovers over the field like the Starship Enterprise, featured a glorious quarterback duel. The Cowboys’ Tony Romo and the Giants’ Eli Manning, who have battled each other since what feels like 1963, were throwing off their back feet, across their bodies, improvising jagged scrambles, muscling tosses into triple coverage.
In the end, Romo and the Cowboys prevailed, 31-21. But it was difficult to draw a conclusion more lasting than that Romo’s cupboard was more fully stocked with talent, with healthy receivers, a resilient and smart defense, and a transcendent running back, DeMarco Murray.
Time and again, Murray hurled himself against the Giants’ defensive line, a vast and collective mass of flesh and sinew and muscle. The Giants would stuff him once, and stuff him again, and hurl him to the turf for good measure.
Then on the next play, or the next sequence, he’d spin and squirt and tumble for 6, 7, 8 crucial yards. On the occasions when he broke free on the outside, and could wheel and spin and deke and feint, well, watch out.
For the Giants, Odell Beckham Jr. tossed down his claim as successor to the injured receiver Victor Cruz. He is a darting, slicing, frenetic sort, and when he catches the ball and can lay down the moves, he resembles a nervous breakdown.
The tailgating begins here at breakfast, moves through lunch (the men with blue-painted faces who wore hockey masks as they chopped vast slabs of barbecue were, in truth, a little bit disturbing), breaks for the game, and resumes in the twilight.
Once the game begins, violence begets violence, and the players claim to groove on it. So Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul spoke afterward of his face-off with Cowboys tackle Tyron Smith. “He gave me some punches in the mouth, and I gave him some punches in the mouth,” he said.
But the injuries come galloping in. There were no season-ending torn ligaments and tendons. But the game had barely begun when the first announcements came of the bent and the mutilated. Defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins and linebacker Jon Beason each made the journey, over the course of the game, from “questionable” to “doubtful” to “out for the game.”
Behind it all are the men who make money off these games. At which point we can invite Jones, the Cowboys’ white-haired billionaire owner, to amble on in.
He talks and talks and offers excellent larger-than-life copy. “I sure am proud of those guys in there,” he said after Sunday’s game. “This was as fine of an hour that we’ve had for our crowd.”
At the same time, he makes you wonder, again, at the marvelously flexible document that is the N.F.L.’s behavior policy.
This past week Jones received a bit of good news, as a judge dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit lodged against him by a former stripper. She accused the owner, with photographic evidence to back her claims, of grabbing her genitals and forcibly kissing her. She also said Jones paid her hush money.
“For the Cowboys to facilitate its president in his sexual predations constitutes extreme and outrageous conduct,” the woman’s lawsuit asserted.
Two months ago, Jones said that “someone has misrepresented photos.”
The judge ruled that the lawsuit was barred not because it was false, necessarily, but rather because it was filed too late. Which in the eyes of the N.F.L. was not exactly the same as receiving a clean bill of health. Or maybe it was.
Jones’s good cheer and spirit of forgiveness has rippled throughout the organization. A few weeks ago, he announced that Josh Brent, a defensive tackle, could begin practicing with the team. Brent had been on an extended sabbatical after he was convicted of intoxicated manslaughter and served more than 100 days in prison. While driving drunk, Brent crashed his car, killing his passenger, Jerry Brown, a linebacker on the practice squad. (Brown’s mother later would plead with the Cowboys to keep Brent on the team.)
Brent apparently was truly repentant. He is also 6 feet 2 and 320 pounds and can, truly, hurl large men to the turf. That combination hits the N.F.L. sweet spot and moved Jones — an emotional man — to let Brent return. With a little more healing balm, Brent just might be able to play the final six games of the season, the Cowboys’ playoff push.
“In no way does this diminish our sorrow for Jerry Brown, his family and his mother,” Jones said recently. “If he gets the work done and get his weight right and gets himself in condition, he may get a chance to get on the field. We’ll see.”
Brent can’t actually practice with the Cowboys until Week 9. But he could travel with the team to London in early November. Jones hasn’t made his mind up on that one yet, although he assured the Dallas news media that Brent was “very contrite.”
It’s all enough to make you want to set your earphones to white noise and wander back up to the field to watch Romo and Manning duel mano a mano.