A defense. An offensive line. Their starting quarterback. Confidence in their coaching staff. An identity. The 2020 Dallas Cowboys are lacking a lot of things at the moment, but after the thorough whooping they took on national television Monday night in their own house, perhaps none of the team’s deficiencies is more immediately troubling right now than that of an obvious leader.
With Dak Prescott lost for the season, who is the Cowboys’ on-the-field leader? The mantle may well fall to Ezekiel Elliott, despite the fact that the star running back is dealing with his own personal issues. With four lost fumbles already on the season, Elliott is having a hard time holding on to the football. But he may now be the one responsible for holding together the entire football team as they navigate some rough waters.
The five-year veteran was asked Wednesday if he feels the need to take on more of a pronounced leadership role with No. 4 on the rehab trail.
“I think I do. I think I do need to, just because Dak, he carried so much of that role. And that has to be filled. So I think I do.”
And it starts, Elliott says, by being more vocal when the team is struggling.
“I think you have to,” Elliot said, per the Cowboys website. “I think you have to lock in a little bit more because, obviously, what you’ve been doing hasn’t been getting it done. You need to exhaust all resources trying to get this thing back on track. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re exhausting all of our resources and we’re doing everything we can to get this thing back on track.”
The voice of veteran leadership is seemingly in short supply in Dallas, given the absurd number of injuries that have taken the team’s most experienced players off the field. Gerald McCoy never made it past the first week of practice. Tyron Smith and La’el Collins are gone. Zack Martin is in concussion protocol. On the defensive side, Sean Lee has yet to suit up in 2020. Leighton Vander Esch broke a collarbone. It’s difficult to lead the troops from the trainer’s table.
If Prescott’s injury had happened in 2019, one could argue Jason Witten or Travis Frederick would have become the Cowboys’ de facto leader. Heck, Michael Bennett felt the need last Thanksgiving to try to get the locker room right after being in town for only a month.
Amari Cooper is surgically smart, but awfully soft-spoken. Aldon Smith is still getting re-acclimated to life in the league. Andy Dalton has been there, done that… but is also too new to start lighting guys up around the Cowboys facility. Linebacker Jaylon Smith says all the right things in interviews, but his answers to reporters’ questions often come across as empty, eye-rolling soundbites. Getting spotlighted by analysts for poor play- jogging after the ball carrier in critical moments and taking atrocious pursuit angles- doesn’t exactly help earn leadership points.
Therein lies the dilemma for Elliott. He’d be the natural choice to automatically assume the primary leadership role in the current climate… except for those glaring fumbles that are contributing mightily to the deep holes the Cowboys are finding themselves in most weeks. Elliott got benched during Monday Night Football; now he’s supposed to stand up and set the example?
Well, yes.
He started by accepting full blame for the 38-10 drubbing. Then the two-time rushing champ set out to personally fix his fumbling problem.
“Honestly,” Elliott shared, “what I did is, [over the] past couple days, I went and got cutups of all my fumbles ever, and looked at them and looked at what I did wrong and what I could’ve done better. That’s what I’ve been doing this week, just kind of studying my fumbles and seeing where things went wrong and what I can do to keep that ball tighter and have better ball security.”
Exactly what Elliott found in those tapes- reportedly dating all the way back to high school- he says is for him to know and learn from… and for opposing defenses to hopefully not find out.
“If you want, you should just turn it on and go find out. I don’t want to give away all my weaknesses right here,” Elliott joked before continuing. “I just need to not put myself in vulnerable situations. I’ve just got to lock in and focus. I don’t think there’s a specific answer. All I can do is watch as much film as I can, gather as much information as I can, and try to use that to help me. But I don’t think there’s an exact answer on how to fix these fumbling problems I’ve had this year.”
Cowboys Nation may be suddenly panicking about Elliott’s recent case of fumblitis, but his head coach says that to judge the All-Pro based on a handful of negative plays paints an incomplete picture.
“I think we all recognize, Zeke’s played a tremendous amount of football,” McCarthy told the media on Wednesday. “He’s been carrying the football, probably, his whole life. So his instinct and awareness, I would definitely classify him as very high in that category of all the running backs I’ve been around in my career. But I think what’s most important- of this tough moment we’re going through with our turnover ratio- is to recognize the importance he places on himself. I get to see Zeke every day. I get to see Zeke in the front row of the team meeting, I see Zeke in the front row of the quarterback-center meeting this morning, his conversation to the team after the game.”
After the Arizona loss, Elliott sucked it up and vowed to his teammates that he will break his turnover habit.
“I just wanted to let them know how terrible I felt, just from my performance,” Elliott explained. “And that I’m supposed to be a guy that this team and this offense can rely on and lean on when things get rough, and I just wasn’t that last Monday night. [I told them] That I was sorry, and I promise I’m going to turn things around for this team.”
Elliott was the focal point of the Week 6 offensive attack before his back-to-back fumbles altered the plan. If Elliott can, in fact, make ball security a non-question moving forward, it will allow Kellen Moore the option of using the whole playbook instead of having to rely on the playing-from-way-behind chapters.
The Cowboys will try once again to put that theory to the test Sunday in Washington.
“We’re going to get this thing right. We are trying to figure out what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to come together. We are going to surround each other. We are going to support each other. We’ve got a big game this week, a division game on the road. We’ve got to go figure out how to get a win.”
Spoken like a true leader. Whether the Cowboys follow, though, remains to be seen.
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