Rams 28, Giants 6: the game ended when Jaxson Dart's knee did
The Giants walked into SoFi Stadium 1-0 with a rookie quarterback. They walked out 1-1 with Jameis Winston's stat line and a first-quarter injury that decided the whole night.
Here is the box score, and then here is what it actually means. Los Angeles scored a touchdown in every quarter, 7-7-7-7. New York kicked two field goals. That is the entire scoring summary of a Monday night game the league put in prime time.
The injury is the story
Dart went down in the first quarter with a left knee injury and did not come back. Everything after that has an asterisk on it, and I mean that in both directions. The Rams get credit for the win. They do not get credit for solving the Giants offense, because the Giants offense they beat was Jameis Winston completing 11 of 27 passes cold off the bench.
Eleven of 27 is 41 percent. That number tells you the plan was built for a different quarterback and nobody had time to build a new one. When your backup is airing it out on 27 attempts and hitting 11, you are not running an offense, you are running out the clock on a bad night.
Stafford is 38 and still doing this
Four touchdowns. 327 yards. One pick, which is the only blemish. He moved into sixth all-time in passing touchdowns on a throw to Davante Adams, per ESPN's box score, and Adams finished with 195 yards on the night. That is not a fluke line. That is a veteran quarterback and a veteran receiver finding a defense that lost its margin for error the second the other side's quarterback left.
The debate about Stafford's place in the all-time list is a bar argument I am happy to have. Sixth in touchdown passes is not a number you argue with. You just say it out loud and let the other guy sit with it.
What I would actually take from this
Do not overreact to a 22-point margin when one team lost its starter before the first quarter ended. The Rams looked good. The Giants looked like a team playing without the guy the whole week of practice was built around. Both of those things are true, and both teams are 1-1.
The question for New York is not the loss. It is how bad the knee is. That answer decides their next month, and until it comes, every take on this game is a take on a game that got cut short.
Box score and injury report per ESPN. Opinion is the taproom's.