Ezekiel Elliott works out with Dak, Cowboys receivers on Prescott’s backyard field
Cowboys players can kick off their voluntary offseason work at team headquarters as early as next Monday, but plenty of them have already gotten a jump start in quarterback Dak Prescott’s backyard.
The scaled-down turf field he added in 2020 has become affectionately known as “The Dakyard.” Professionally installed by the same company that did AT&T Stadium and The Star in Frisco, it includes regulation hash marks and a 10-yard end zone.
It’s become a popular spot for Prescott and his teammates to practice the precise throws and routes they’ll look to execute on Sundays, and landing an invite for a workout there has come to carry some amount of weight for those who lend credence to such things.
So it took many by surprise when recent photos taken in The Dakyard showed Prescott getting in reps with receivers CeeDee Lamb, Simi Fehoko, Jalen Tolbert, KaVontae Turpin, and Dennis Houston, tight ends Jake Ferguson and Sean McKeon… as well as running back Ezekiel Elliott.
More pictures from the “Dak-yard” courtesy of @42ndWitness on IG
Simi Fehoko, Jake Ferguson, Dak Prescott, and… Ezekiel Elliott 🤔
(📸: @42ndWitness) #DallasCowboys #CowboysNation pic.twitter.com/8T0y8fuDgI
— Brandon Loree (@Brandoniswrite) April 12, 2023
Elliott, of course, was released by the Cowboys in mid-March and has yet to land with another club, so his presence raised a few eyebrows. Some even interpreted the workout as a sign that the two-time rushing champ is on his way back to Dallas on a new, less costly contract.
Yes, head coach Mike McCarthy and owner Jerry Jones both publicly left the door open for a possible 2023 reunion with Elliott, but the reality is that it’s highly unlikely.
The team didn’t even offer their former first-round draft pick a reduced-money deal, they said, out of “respect” for what he has meant to the franchise and on the assumption that he’d prefer to let a better offer come to him from elsewhere. The 27-year-old has named a handful of teams he says he’d like to play for, but he’ll probably be waiting until after the draft (and perhaps well into training camp), once a few clubs inevitably realize they’re not as set at the position as they had hoped.
The simple answer to why Elliott was working out in Prescott’s backyard with current Cowboys players is friendship. The quarterback and running back came up together as rookies in that breakout year of 2016; their close relationship has been well documented over the years since. Prescott went so far as to call Elliott “a brother” and admit recently that he was “hurt” by the front office’s decision to release the seven-year veteran.
But the two hanging out together and even getting in a group offseason workout is perfectly natural and innocuous, with no hidden meaning or top-secret subtext.
