DeMarcus Ware Fires Up Cowboys-Giants Week

The trash talk has begun before biggest Cowboys-Giants game in some time.

In a sports world where players move teams often during their careers and when there are regular battles that unify them against ownership, it is increasingly uncommon to see actual dislike between players on rival teams bubble to the surface.

That's what makes the weeks when the Cowboys play the Giants so much fun. You can always count on members of both teams to say some incendiary stuff, which wouldn't matter all that much if you didn't see it carry over to the game when both teams play with outsize chips on their shoulders. 

History tells us that those feelings make it to the field when the Cowboys and Giants butt heads. Based on the start of the festivities on Wednesday, this should be one of the bigger weeks yet.

DeMarcus Ware set the stage by taking aim at Justin Tuck. Ware brought up Tuck's derogatory comments about the Cowboys and their "crappy" stadium and, like a parent counseling an upset child, said that Tuck was just being mean because he's jealous.

"He says that because maybe he wants to play here," Ware said. "Everybody wants to play for the Cowboys. If I wasn't playing for Cowboys, I'd call it that, too, because I want to play for them."

Unless he has a time machine that would transport him back to the Jimmy Johnson era, it is hard to imagine why Tuck would be itching to play for the Cowboys but reality probably wasn't much of a concern to Ware. He saw his shot, took it and it should elicit a fun response from Tuck in the next couple of days. 

Some of Ware's teammates joined the fun, including Mike Jenkins calling Brandon Jacobs a "big bully" for the amount of trash talk he spews on the field.

This one puts Giants fans in a tough spot because Jacobs tries to bully them at every opportunity, but they'll likely just flip on a YouTube of Jenkins playing defense like he's afraid of making any kind of contact with an opposing ball carrier.

As Jacobs has taught us over the years, all the words in the world don't mean a thing when it comes to what actually goes down on the field. It's fun to listen to and engage in if you are buddies with a fan of the other team, but the game isn't going to be decided by who comes up with the most clever trash talk.

It's going to be decided by David Diehl trying to block Ware and Doug Free trying to block Tuck. It will come down to whether or not Jenkins can hang with Hakeem Nicks, Tony Romo's ability to avoid the big mistakes and a dozen other players on both sides of the ball.

And the stakes, as you're certainly aware, couldn't be higher. The Giants need to win both their games with the Cowboys if they want to win the NFC East and the loser is going to have a hard time making the playoffs at all.

So let all the talk come, get a grin when it does and then get your popcorn ready for Sunday night because it's gonna be a mighty fine show.

Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.

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