Barber Sets Rushing Marks as Giants Top Cowboys to End Season

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Tiki Barber became the Giants’ all-time leading rusher and capped his achievement with a winning flair.Barber finished a record-setting last night by scoring on a 3-yard run with 11 seconds to play, leading the Giants to a 28-24 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in a wild finale to the NFL regular season.Eli Manning, who was 18-of-27 for 144 yards, also threw three touchdown passes as the Giants (6-10) snapped an eight-game losing streak.The late heroics providing Manning his first career victory and spoiled a great effort by Cowboys quarterback Vinny Testaverde in what might have been the final game of his 18-year career.Testaverde threw for a touchdown and engineered a late 80-yard march that set up Julius Jones’s go-ahead 1-yard run with 1:49 to play. But the Cowboys (6-10) couldn’t hold on.The Giants recovered their own fumble on the ensuing kickoff and drove 66 yards in six plays for the winning touchdown, added by a 15-yard roughing-the-passer penalty on the first play, a 23-yard pass to Barber.Barber set Giants single-season and career rushing records in the game, surpassing marks held by Rodney Hampton and Joe Morris, respectively. He also wound up leading the league in all-purpose yards this season.Manning threw touchdown passes of 2 yards to Visanthe Shiancoe, 15 yards to David Tyree and 3 to Barber, the last one giving the Giants a 21-16 lead with 11:51 to play.Testaverde, who threw a 7-yard touchdown pass to Jason Witten in the third quarter, then seemed to give the Cowboys the game by leading an 80-yard march featuring three passes to Witten and a 23-yard run by Julius Jones, who rushed 29 times for 149 yards.Faced with a fourth-and-goal at the 1, Testaverde handed the ball to Jones and he surged into the end zone for a 22-21 lead. Testaverde hit Witten for a 2-point conversion.On the ensuing kickoff, Marcellus Rivers fumbled, but recovered at the Giants 34. Barber then ran for 10 yards and Manning hit Rivers on a 5-yard pass. Barber carried the ball the next three times on run of 2, 8, and finally the winner with no timeouts left.Barber finished with 24 carries for 95 yards and three catches for 21 yards. He finished the season with 1,518 yards rushing, beating Morris’s mark in 1986. He has 6,926 career yards, breaking the franchise mark of 6,897 set by Hampton, who played from 1990-97.Billy Cundiff kicked field goals of 40, 24, and 45 yards for Dallas, which lost star receiver Keyshawn Johnson with a broken left ankle in the second quarter.

Barber Sets Rushing Marks as Giants Top Cowboys to End Season

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