The Giants will open the 2012 season against the same opponent they defeated to conclude the 2011 season.
The defending Super Bowl champion Giants will host their NFC East rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, in MetLife Stadium on Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 8:30 p.m. The game will be televised nationally by NBC – just as both Giants-Cowboys games were last season.
This will be the ninth consecutive season the defending champion will host the NFL Kickoff game. The previous eight games were played on Thursday night of Kickoff Weekend. The home team won each of those eight games, including Green Bay's victory over New Orleans last year. The Giants-Cowboys game was moved to Wednesday to avoid a conflict with President Barack Obama's Thursday night speech at the Democratic National Convention.
The Giants defeated Dallas twice in the last four weeks of the 2011 season to sweep the series for the second time in three years. They improved to 3-0 in Cowboys Stadium with a 37-34 triumph on Dec. 11 and clinched the NFC East championship with a 31-14 victory in MetLife Stadium on Jan. 1. The Giants have won five of their last six games vs. Dallas.
The Giants finished the 2011 regular season with a 9-7 record before sweeping four postseason games to win their second championship in five seasons. The Cowboys were 8-8 and finished third after losing a tiebreaker with Philadelphia.
The 2012 season will be the second in a row in which the Giants will begin the year against the same team they played in the previous regular season finale. Last year, they opened in Washington after concluding the 2010 season with a victory over the Redskins.
This will be the first time the Giants closed one season at and opened the next one in the same venue against the same opponent since 1994-95, when the Cowboys visited Giants Stadium for back-to-back games – 8½ months apart.
The Giants will open a season against an NFC East opponent for the fifth time in six years. It's their first opener against Dallas since 2007 and first home opener vs. the Cowboys since 1995.
The Giants are 49-33-5 in season openers and 17-11 in season-opening home games. In their most recent Kickoff game, they defeated Washington, 16-7, on Sept. 4, 2008.
This will be the Giants' first Wednesday game since Oct. 3, 1934, a 14-12 victory over Pittsburgh. The Giants are 5-1 in Wednesday games, playing all of them from 1925-34. They are 2-0 in Wednesday season openers, defeating Newark, 32-0, on Sept. 17, 1930 and Pittsburgh, 23-2, on Sept. 20, 1933.
The last NFL game played on a Wednesday was on Sept. 22, 1948, when the Los Angeles Rams beat the Detroit Lions, 44-7.
The Giants trail in the all-time regular season series vs. Dallas, 56-41-2.
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