AMERICAN FOOTBALL:THE ENDING hung heavily over MetLife Stadium on Sunday evening. The New York Giants' season had been reduced to the simplest of situations: beat the Dallas Cowboys, win the NFC East and advance to the play-offs; lose and collapse for a third consecutive year, and underperforming players and maybe even veteran coach Tom Coughlin would topple.

The Giants beat the Cowboys, 31-14, throttling them for most of the night and seizing a post-season berth in the most dramatic of fashions. They will now host the Atlanta Falcons next Sunday in a wild-card game.

Eli Manning led the Giants, passing for 346 yards and three touchdowns. Victor Cruz caught six passes for 178 yards and a touchdown – a 74-yard jaunt, while Hakeem Nicks had five receptions, including a four-yard touchdown catch. Running back Ahmad Bradshaw rushed for 57 yards and one score, and caught a 10-yard pass for another.

When it was over, and Manning had kneeled down for the last time, the players ran across the field in celebration. Cruz waved his arms to the fans. Coughlin came to his postgame news conference wearing a broad grin and a black division championship hat.

Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo, playing with a swollen and bruised right hand he injured last week, was on the run all game. The Giants’ defence chased him down, recording six sacks, including two from defensive end Osi Umenyiora. Romo passed for 289 yards and two touchdowns but also threw a critical interception late as the Cowboys tried to rally.

Dallas, who fell short of the play-offs for a second straight season, missed tackles on each of the Giants’ first three touchdowns and got hands on – but could not recover – two Giants fumbles. A third fumble they did recover was nullified by a penalty.

The Giants capitalised. In their most complete effort in weeks, the Giants’ offence held the ball for nearly 10 minutes more than Dallas while the defence limited the Cowboys to four of 12 third-down conversions.

In a game when the players knew the consequences – on the field and, at least potentially, off it – there was a collective surge.

The atmosphere in the Giants’ locker room seemed to be a mixture of joy and relief, the latter, no doubt, a result of playing under such scrutiny for the past month. After all, they began the season 6-2. They led the division by two games, a virtual certainty to make the play-offs.

But then they lost four games in a row, puncturing the positivity they had built before Halloween and dooming them to a white-knuckle finish. Dramatic wins over the Cowboys on December 11th and the Jets on Christmas Eve sandwiched a numbing performance against the Washington Redskins, and offered a fitting review of a season dotted by alarming inconsistency.

Even the players often struggled to explain how they could, for example, look so feeble against the Seattle Seahawks – as they did in a 11-point defeat on October 9th – but then sparkle as they did in rallying from 12 points down late in the fourth quarter in the first game against Dallas.

That game – a 37-34 victory that was also played on a Sunday night – was supposed to be a launching point for the Giants. Instead, they were beaten by the eliminated Redskins and capitalised on a few big plays against the Jets, sending them into Sunday – the first all-or-nothing finale for both teams in franchise history, according to the Giants – with the same set of concerns they had faced all year.

Could the league’s worst running game produce anything of substance? Would the Giants be able to stop the run? And what of the Giants’ beleaguered secondary?

For one night, at least, all the answers came back positively. The Giants rushed for 106 yards, held the Cowboys to just 49 and contained Romo, mostly because of their reinvigorated defensive line.

“This is the situation we wanted to be in, we just took a roundabout way of getting there,” linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said. “We, as a defence, know what we have to do. And we did it.”

A significant part of that was Umenyiora, who returned after missing a month with an ankle injury, but lined up at the start of the game on the left side of the defence – not his typical side – so Jason Pierre-Paul, the second-year star, could remain on the right.

Umenyiora picked up a sack in the first quarter (with Justin Tuck, playing defensive tackle on some downs, clearing the way) and another in the third. Pierre-Paul, who was named to his first Pro Bowl last week, recorded one, too, to bring his season total to 16½.

With Tuck, Umenyiora and Pierre-Paul playing together, the Giants believe their pass rush can be the dominant force it was in 2007, when they rode the defence to a Super Bowl title. Sunday, at least, was a start.

If Pierre-Paul has been this season’s defensive revelation, Cruz is surely the offensive equivalent. His 74-yard touchdown catch in the first quarter was another track-meet performance: Cruz caught the ball on a short route toward the sideline, slipped past cornerback Terence Newman and raced nearly 70 yards to the end zone.

It was Cruz’s fifth touchdown catch of 65 yards or more this season – most in the NFL since 1951 – and he celebrated with his patented salsa dance and a few blown kisses to the crowd.

A key block from Nicks helped spring Cruz on the play, but the former undrafted free agent’s speed is sublime; he seemed to shift into a higher gear as he whizzed down the Giants’ sideline, leaving two defenders in his wake.

“I’m doing cartwheels on the sideline as he’s running by,” Coughlin said. Cruz’s catch, along with Bradshaw’s two touchdowns, gave the Giants a 21-0 half-time lead, their largest lead at any point in a game this season.

It was also eight more points than the Giants scored in the final game of the 1993 season – the last time these teams played for a division title on the final weekend of the season.

On that day – 19 years ago yesterday – Emmitt Smith buoyed the Cowboys to a 16-13 victory despite playing with a separated shoulder. In that instance, though, the Giants had a safety net; they made the play-offs anyway as a wild card. On Sunday, with another injured star leading the Cowboys, the Giants had no such leeway.

This time, they battered Romo. This time, they won the division. This time, they did not stumble.

– New York Times Service