Buyer’s remorse? Elliott not earning his keep
This was one of those rare nights when the Dallas Cowboys were counting on Ezekiel Elliott — the kind of game they played all the time in 2016 when he led the NFL in rushing by more than 300 yards and allowed fellow rookie Dak Prescott to grow into the more difficult role of NFL starting quarterback, the year the two took the league by storm and guided Dallas to a 13-3 record.
As time passed and Prescott developed and the Cowboys added Amari Cooper and then CeeDee Lamb, this became Dak’s offense. Elliott’s importance diminished on an almost weekly basis. He became a luxury item — a $90 million player with zero trade value — but Monday night with Andy Dalton forced to make his first Dallas start after Prescott’s season-ending injury, yes, the Cowboys sorely needed a big, determined effort from Zeke to ease the transition at quarterback.
What did they get?
A mess. Slop. Indifference. Two lost fumbles leading to 14 points.
The Arizona Cardinals are a fun team to watch, and I’m going to be curious to see what Kyler Murray and Kliff Kingsbury achieve in the desert for a franchise that has done so little. But the Cardinals didn’t have a better weapon Monday than Elliott, who lost two fumbles in the second quarter — neither on a
particularly vicious or remarkable hit — to increase his league total and to propel Arizona on its way to a 38-10 romp that conjured memories of the St. Louis Cardinals’ 38-0 win at the Cotton Bowl in the first “Monday Night Football” appearance for either club 50 years ago.
“I got us off to a terrible start,’’ Zeke said. “I’m supposed to be a guy the team can rely on, a guy the team can lean on.”
He wasn’t. The Cardinals leaned on his largesse instead.
The Cowboys can’t have this.
They are going to lose a bunch of games this season because no team loses its quarterback and starting tackles and center (if you count retired Travis Frederick) and, for one night, its best guard and one of its few elite talents in Zack Martin without paying a price. But they ask precious little of Zeke in their
pass-happy offense, and on Monday night they got even less.
It’s a reminder of how little attention Cowboys management was paying to the NFL landscape in the summer of 2019 when they honored Elliott’s holdout and made him the highestpaid back in the league — a $15 million per year average since eclipsed by Carolina’s Christian McCaffrey.
The last thing any NFL team ever wants is the highest-paid back on its payroll, which is why I suggested Zeke has no trade value whatsoever. If the Cowboys wanted to get rid of him — they don’t because they aren’t that creative and forward-thinking — nobody is looking to add a huge salary-cap hit at the running back position for 2021 with a declining player who now can’t stop fumbling along with not being able to break runs of any consequence.
Elliott had 12 carries for 49 yards and caught eight passes — mostly desperation dump-offs by Dalton — for a measly 31 yards.
Twenty touches for 80 yards when nearly half of them are through the air is hardly elite. It’s pedestrian.
Yet here the Cowboys are because the Joneses got scared and were afraid of what might happen if they opened the 2019 season against the Giants, Redskins and Dolphins without Zeke (Hint: They probably would have won all three games anyway). And so they compared Todd Gurley’s contract with Le’Veon Bell’s contract and gave Zeke a little more.
Here’s an after-the-fact clue as to why this was a terrible idea.
Two years after the Rams extended Gurley, they released him. Barely a year after they signed Bell, the Jets released him. No one — repeat no one — is desperate for running backs with extended wear on the treads. Is that what Elliott is showing with these fumbles? Yeah, he lost five as a rookie, too, but the balls were bouncing the Cowboys’ way that season and only one was lost.
This year with 221 fewer carries, Zeke already has five fumbles and four have been lost. The Cowboys have lost a league-high 15 turnovers. As coach Mike McCarthy was almost breathless to announce, Dallas leads the league at minus-12 in the takeaway department. You could say it’s a miracle the Cowboys are 2-4 and, if you think of how the Atlanta game ended, you realize you’re right.
“I have a continuing issue with ball security on my football team,” McCarthy said. “I’m not getting the job done right now.”
The Cardinals ran for 261 yards. Kenyan Drake had 164 of them, and Drake is no one’s idea of elite or special. Arizona is playing the game with an eye toward the league’s future.
The Cowboys from top to bottom are a franchise out of step. Now it’s running out of having anything on offense beyond some top-notch receivers and a running back whose history and contract far exceed his present value.