Originally published on Out Of Bounds on February 25, 2022
The popular opinion that’s been spreading for the past couple of years is that Ezekiel Elliott is washed up, stealing money from the Cowboys, and keeping a better running back on the bench. I definitely don’t have the same opinion, but I understand why people keep parroting that opinion. His production has dropped off and he’s been dealing with lower body injuries for the past 2 seasons. More than anything, people are mad at Zeke for holding out for a new contract in 2019 when he still had 2 years left on his rookie contract. And since he hasn’t been running for 1,400 or 1,500 yards and winning rushing titles, Cowboys fans are wanting to run him out of town.
Running backs tend to get screwed in the NFL, especially on rookie contracts, because they provide their most value when they are most limited on the salary they can command and are run ragged, making a 2nd contract risky for their team. Having seen many RBs get screwed, I didn’t object to Zeke looking for security. What gets lost on a lot of Cowboys fans is that the offense was non-existent without #21, and that’s why he got paid. Look no further than the stretch in 2017 where the team went 15 straight quarters without the offense scoring a single touchdown during his 6-game suspension.
After carrying the Cowboys offense on his back and getting 350+ touches in 2 of his first 3 seasons, Zeke realized that they were going to run him into the ground and then give him the DeMarco Murray treatment. He had them against the ropes because both the front office and coaches knew the team wouldn’t go anywhere without a great running game, and up to that point, Zeke had given them that. In those 3 seasons he led the NFL in rushing twice, and in the year he didn’t, he still led the league in rushing yards per game.
The real reason Ezekiel Elliott’s production has been going down the last 3 years, and a big part of why he hasn’t been able to reach his full potential, is because he has been badly misused throughout his career. At times he’s even been underused. It’s been an ongoing thing since the very beginning of his career. For instance, people were already starting to call Zeke a bust after the first 2 games of his rookie season. But here’s what was really happening:
In those 2 games, the Cowboys had Zeke offset, trying to run a bunch of offset slashing plays that were limiting his ability to see the field, forcing him to make only 1 cut or not cuts at all. When you couple that with his inexperience at the time, and trying to hit the hole as hard as he could, he never gave himself a chance. Neither did his offensive coordinator. You could see Zeke developing patience in Games 2 and 3. Once he got to Game 4, it was on.
Ezekiel Elliott is a 1-cut-and-go runner. A lot of running backs try to get to the sideline, but he gets north and south fairly quickly, and then it’s him against the defender. Short yardage and dirty runs are the most important part of the game for a RB. That’s how you create the big plays. Zeke continues to drive his legs and finish forward, not getting knocked backwards. He also knows how to protect himself and the football at the same time. Late in games, defenders don’t want to tackle him. A true quality RB gets better as the game goes on.
Unfortunately for Zeke, in his 6 years with the Cowboys he hasn’t had the right coaches to put him in a position to maximize his talents. For starters, he had Jason Garrett as his head coach for his first 4 years. Garrett had ZERO imagination and ZERO innovation. He would run Zeke up the middle on 1st and 2nd down, and then either throw it to him on 3rd down or ask him to block. Zeke was getting hit on every play. That was absolutely the wrong way to protect the investment of your top 5 draft pick, №4 overall to be exact.
Let’s also not forget that Zeke was 21 in his rookie season, which is very young for a guy to be getting punished by grown men that have been in an NFL strength and conditioning program for 5+ years. Garrett beat him down by trying to mold the Cowboys in the image of those 90’s teams he played on. That’s why Zeke and his people asked for and got a new contract when they did. Outside of the Jimmy Johnson debacle, sticking with Jason Garrett too long is the biggest mistake of Jerry Jones’ ownership tenure. The residual impact of that choice is still being felt.
To me, the worst thing about the Jason Garrett era, especially with Scott Linehan as the offensive coordinator, was that the Cowboys were notorious for going away from their greatest strength and short-circuiting their own offense. A lot of times they went away from their identity against teams that showed no capability of stopping what they did best, which was running the ball. Not only did they give away several games by doing that, they robbed Ezekiel Elliott of even more greatness, more specifically in his rookie season. Here’s a rant from me about both of these things:
***Ezekiel Elliott was TOTALLY robbed of literally a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by his coaches in 2016. Yeah, I’m talking about the NFL rookie rushing record. It’s bad enough that they grossly underused Zeke in several games that year, but part of me thinks Jason Garrett intentionally kept him from having any shot at the record in the last game of the season just so he wouldn’t be forced to let him go for it. If Zeke had been within 100 or so yards of getting the record by Game 15, or even after, Garrett would have been in a tight spot when it comes to resting him in the season finale.
For what it’s worth, Eric Dickerson had 68 more carries in his rookie year than Zeke did. If Zeke could have gotten half of that amount he would have gotten the record. I get that the Cowboys already had home field advantage wrapped up and that it was a meaningless game in the standings. I also understand that all players, especially running backs need rest, but to hold Zeke back the way Garrett and Linehan did was ridiculous. He only played in half of the Lions game and didn’t play at all against the Eagles, and with the Cowboys having a bye in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, that was almost a month of inactivity.
If I had been a reporter at the press conference after that Lions game, I would have straight up asked Garrett why he pulled Zeke when so much time was still left, with a follow-up of whether Emmitt Smith would have had the career he had playing for a head coach that was too conservative. You only get 1 shot at breaking a rookie record, and they should have let him go for it. Falling short of the record also likely cost Zeke the AP Offensive Rookie Of The Year award, and possibly the Offensive Player Of The Year too.
Most people agreed with Garrett’s decision to pull Zeke early, saying that a Super Bowl is more important than records and individual accolades. While that is true, I don’t see how winning a Super Bowl and breaking a record are mutually exclusive. Also, when you have MVP, OPOY, DPOY, or ROY candidates on your team, it makes things easier on your team. The cool thing to say is “I want rings, not personal achievements.”, but they go hand in hand with postseason success. Let’s not act like it’s an either/or scenario.
Special opportunities in life don’t show up every day, so you need to take advantage of them when they arise. Personal accomplishments and achievements are a great thing and shouldn’t be discouraged. I think it’s safe to say that most people have some sort of goals set for their lives. Anybody that thinks that record wasn’t important to Zeke is being entirely delusional. With that being said, you collect whatever trophies and records you can as they come. What if Zeke never wins a Super Bowl? If given the chance, at least he could have had that record. You think Emmitt would give back his MVP and rushing records?
Ezekiel Elliott breaking the NFL rookie rushing record would have been seen as a great accomplishment by the entire Cowboys offense. It’s also something his offensive line would have been proud to do for him with the appreciation he showed them. A record like that takes a team effort to accomplish, and the coaches let a golden opportunity slip away. That would have been a special moment for them. I would even argue that it would have made them play harder in the playoffs and brought them closer as a team.
Why bother keeping track of stats at all other than the score if breaking records is such a bad thing? Do Cowboys fans not appreciate the fact that the NFL’s all-time rushing record is held by a Cowboy? The single-season rookie rushing record would have been nice to have right next to that one. It would have been a hell of an accomplishment, given that the record has stood since 1983. Those “anti-record” fans also acted like the Cowboys were guaranteed a Super Bowl win since Zeke didn’t get the carries necessary to break it.
The rookie rushing record is a hard one to break. Not only do you have to be really good and durable, you have to have a bunch of other things fall in place as well. The 1983 Rams were a 9–7 team that needed to win their last game just to make the playoffs. What ultimately hurt Zeke’s quest for the record was that his team was too good. Winning the Super Bowl that year would have been the perfect solace for not getting the record. Since the Cowboys didn’t win it, Zeke came up short in a lot of ways in his rookie season.
Now let’s talk about why the Cowboys came up short as a team in 2016 after a strong regular season showing. The coaches, specifically Jason Garrett and Scott Linehan, were coaching scared. As a result, the team came out rusty in the playoff game against the Packers. The worst thing coaches can do is overthink their game plan in the playoffs just because it’s a 1-and-done tournament. You have to go with what worked for 16 weeks. It’s nice to do great things in the regular season, but what’s the point in even playing if you’re going to continue doing those same things when the playoffs roll around?
I knew before we played the Packers that if we lost the game it would be because of coaching. The Packers ran a base defense for a grand total of 5 plays. They were begging us to run with Zeke, but Garrett and Linehan wouldn’t bite. I know the Packers’ secondary was bad at the time, but if you’re facing a quarterback like Aaron Rodgers, your best chance of winning is to dominate the time of possession and keep him off the field as much as possible.
They did everything possible to rest Zeke in the regular season, to the point of barely using him the 2nd quarter all season, and then “rested” him for the last 6 quarters of the regular season, giving him 3 1/2 weeks off. With that much inactivity and the fact that they kept Zeke from breaking the record, you would think they would give him a full workload. These fools only gave him 22 carries (23 total touches), which was nowhere near enough. I don’t care if a defense is putting 13 in the box, you make them prove they can stop your running game before you stop it yourself.
It wasn’t just the volume of Zeke’s touches that irritated me, it was also the lack of running plays in key situations. Him having only 10 carries at halftime and 22 total absolutely should have been a fireable offense. He finished with 125 yards and averaged 5.7 yards per carry, so it’s not like they were shutting him down. The Packers feared Zeke more than anything, yet he wasn’t even in the backfield on key plays. It was unreal.
With Garrett and Linehan being so pass-happy from the start, we waited until we were down 21–3 to finally start running the ball. There were 2 statement opportunities in the 1st half to assert our dominance: the opening drive at 3rd and 2, and the last drive at 1st and goal. Both times, Zeke was nowhere to be found, and both times we had to settle for field goals. In fact, when we had the 1st and goal, we used an empty backfield and had 3 straight incompletions instead of running Zeke.
The head coach and offensive coordinator were detriments to the Cowboys against the Packers. They had the best offensive line in the NFL and the league’s leading rusher, but they kept outsmarting themselves and letting the Packers off the hook. What’s worse is that we had the ball on 3rd and 2 or less 8 times and only ran the ball ONCE. With these coaches, that down and distance was virtually a guaranteed pass play, with an empty backfield the majority of the time, when everybody in the stadium knows it’s a pass.
You have to let your stars flourish. Ezekiel Elliott stabilizes everything and gives balance to the Cowboys offense. Everything plays off of what he does in the running game. When you have #21 in your backfield, you are NEVER out of a game. You just knew he would touch the ball at least 30 times against the Packers. Not only are you never out of a game with Zeke, you’re also 1 missed tackle away from a touchdown. As a result of him not touching the ball enough, we lost the game by 3 points.
How can you claim to be a physical, smash-mouth, run-first team when you won’t even run it on 3rd and short? This game was a classic betrayal of our identity as a team and core belief in physical football. The score didn’t dictate the majority of those decisions at the time, it’s just something that the coach(es) individually or collectively opted to do. Going away from the strength of the team once again came back to bite us hard, and that seems to be a habit no matter who calls the plays, whether it’s 2016 or 2021.***
Jason Garrett during his tenure and the Cowboys franchise as a whole, even today with a different coaching regime, have always been reactionary. Garrett used to get criticized all the time for not running the ball enough, then he finally “changed”, but you still saw his stubbornness creep back up in key situations. We used to get criticized for neglecting the offensive line before we finally reacted.
Another thing Garrett got criticized for was his bad clock management before it seemed like he had finally corrected it in 2016, before it reared its ugly head again in the Packers playoff loss. Bottom line, the Cowboys are never ahead of the curve. Sometimes the organization appears to be geniuses when something is finally addressed, but then some other issue pops up that was neglected for too long. What we saw in that playoff game was old mistakes resurface that appeared to have been corrected in the regular season.
When have the Dallas Cowboys EVER won without an elite running game? Duane Thomas, Calvin Hill, Tony Dorsett, and Emmitt Smith all won Super Bowls with this team. I’m not saying run the ball just for the sake of running it, but an elite rushing attack balanced with a potent pass offense seems to be what worked in winning the 5 trophies that we do have. The quarterback is important because he touches the ball on every play, and we haven’t won anything without a top tier QB either, but those Cowboys teams were balanced. There were more prolific passers than Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman when they played, but they both had a top-notch running game to lean on.
Many people to this day are still upset about the Cowboys drafting Ezekiel Elliott in 2016, but I still believe it was the right pick even with the way things have played out. Why? At that time, the Cowboys had the best offensive line in the NFL, which was the strength of the team. If those guys are your building blocks, why not maximize that strength by getting a blue chip RB to put behind them? In 2015, we needed the O-line to take over a couple of games for us, but we didn’t have the RB to help them do it. We needed a 3-down back, not a committee of backs that you hope could be serviceable. With that line having 5 potential Pro Bowlers, it was best to give them every chance to succeed.
The Cowboys didn’t necessarily have to draft a RB in the 1st round of the 2016 NFL Draft, but if you get to the №4 selection and Zeke is the best player on your board, you need to go ahead and take him. I heard quite often over the years that Joey Bosa likely would have been the pick if he didn’t go at №3, and if that was the case, a lot of times the best laid plans don’t always work out. You end up with a guy like Emmitt Smith in 1990, CeeDee Lamb in 2020, or Micah Parsons in 2021, because that wasn’t the plan.
Unfortunately, it’s a shame how fans can be ungrateful sometimes. Zeke has carried the Cowboys since 2016. Even this past season, teams still chose to stop him first and make Dak beat them. It’s just that Zeke has been beat up the past couple of seasons and not able to bail out the passing game whenever it’s struggled. The fact still remains that when he runs for over 100 yards the Cowboys almost always win. The problem is that too many times throughout Zeke’s career he’s been shut down by the Cowboys’ decision makers. This is what happens when you have 2 coaches in charge that are former quarterbacks and are in love with the passing game. Our players often have to win in spite of the coaches, and that makes it tough.
