Cowboys cut Ezekiel Elliott because he was expensive & done. Now he’s cheap & done.
Jerry has finally found something that he can’t sell, spin, or market. Unless you are related to him, no one is buying this latest move.
The standard optimism and curiosity from the NFL Draft wasn’t even 48 hours old before Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his “team” took a bulldozer to that hope by signing a running back who is done with a capital F.
The Cowboys are not just testing the theory that any running back can suffice in this era of NFL, they are now the crazy Instagram scientist who thinks just because he wears a lab coat whatever lunatic idea he spews is legit.
The Cowboys bringing back Ezekiel Elliott is a bad enough idea but adding him to this running back room is the Super Bowl MVP of Horrible Player Moves. Apparently Julius Jones, Paul Palmer, and Herschel Walker were not available.
On Monday, the Cowboys brought Zeke in for a physical. If he passes, he will sign which does not mean he will make the final roster before Week 1 of the regular season.
Zeke is a good pro and a nice guy to have in an NFL locker room, but on an NFL field he has nothing left. The Cowboys, mostly under previous head coach Jason Garrett, used up everything of note that Zeke could produce on a field.
We know this because we all saw what he did in what we thought was his final season with the team, in 2022. That was the worst season of his career, a year where he was essentially replaced by Tony Pollard.
Every Cowboys fan remembers what should have been Zeke’s final game: in the divisional round of the 2022 playoffs at San Francisco.
Pollard suffered a leg injury in the first half which put Zeke back in his familiar role. It was not painful or ugly to watch Zeke that day but sad. He ran the ball 10 times that day for 26 yards, and caught two passes for seven yards.
One of the best parts to his game, blocking, wasn’t the same, either.
After the Cowboys cut him in the offseason, he signed with a bad New England team. It was another career-worst season for Zeke; when the Patriots played the Cowboys last season, Elliott looked like your typical former great running back playing out the final year of his career.
The same thing happened with Tony Dorsett in Denver, and Emmitt Smith in Arizona.
In the Cowboys’ 38-3 win over New England, Zeke ran six times for 16 yards. Once the offseason began, the Patriots dumped him as part of a complete team overhaul.
As Zeke fell so did the Cowboys’ running game; the rushing offense ranked 14th in the NFL, but that feels a tad misleading. This was not a reliable unit, and it was awful in short yardage.
The Pollard experiment as the starter with the Cowboys went as predicted by outsiders. His overall stats looked decent, but he wore down as the season progressed and wasn’t much of a threat. Some of that has to be put on his offensive line.
The team’s attempt to address the position this winter/spring have crossed the border from Laughable to Insulting. Pollard left as a free agent, and the Cowboys didn’t draft a running back with their eight picks.
Their best running back now is Rico Dowdle, who ran for 361 yards as a reserve last season. There is a handful of other guys in this running back room, all of whom will make you say, “Oh, I kinda remember him” or, most likely, “Who?”
The Cowboys are bringing back Zeke on a one-year contract because they know him, like him, and trust him. Those are all three valuable qualities for an NFL player.
They are bringing him back because maybe he can get the yards where there is none. Last season, the Cowboys were one of the worst in the NFL at scoring touchdowns inside the 10 yard line.
When there was no air in a pile of bodies, he found a way to breathe, or push through the humanity for a yard or two, or the end zone. That was his niche, and it was his “thing” ... four years ago.
The real reason the Cowboys are bringing Zeke back is because he is cheap, they are desperate, and there is no one else. Just because he signed the contract doesn’t necessarily mean he will make the team, but it will be a surprise if he doesn’t.
The value of a great running back is nothing like the days of Dorsett and Emmitt, or even in the earliest days of Zeke’s career.
The Cowboys under Mike McCarthy have embraced the current NFL philosophy that you only need a good one to be effective.
What the Cowboys are doing now doesn’t even qualify as that; what the Cowboys are doing now is emulating the lunatic Instagram “scientist” preaching that you don’t need to drink water, Vitamin C is actually bad for you and fiber is overrated.
And no one is buying it.
