The Cowboys’ rushing attack has been a debilitating weakness all season, with the team ranking 31st out of 32 teams in rushing attempts per game, rushing yards per game, and rushing yards per carry with the season now more than half over.
The team’s running-back-by-committee approach has been the primary contributing factor in the eyes of most observers. The Cowboys split carries among Ezekiel Elliott and Rico Dowdle to start the season, finally called up Dalvin Cook only to have him turn in very pedestrian numbers, and they feed Deuce Vaughn and Hunter Luepke so sparingly it’s easy to forget they’re still on the team.
Of the five, only the fullback Luepke has taken offensive snaps in every game of the 2024 campaign, with the Dallas coaching staff unwilling to further commit to any of their other backfield options.
Except, maybe, now.
When asked Thursday about Dowdle, head coach Mike McCarthy- in Week 11 but for the first time this season- said out loud what most of Cowboys Nation has been thinking for months.
“He’s the lead back,” McCarthy said during a pre-practice press conference, “I thought he had a really good first half [versus Philadelphia], and I think that’s really illustrated by the attempts. Rico needs to touch the ball.”
A significant decision for the #Cowboys — Rico Dowdle is now the lead RB. https://t.co/ulWNEgS5qt
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) November 14, 2024
Dowdle’s 10 carries for 50 yards in the first and second quarters of Sunday’s 34-6 loss to the Eagles represented his busiest and most productive first half of the season. And while the game getting away from the Cowboys in the third stanza slowed down the 26-year-old’s stats, Dowdle has quietly managed to climb his way up the rankings of several key categories among the league’s rushers.
At an average of 4.5 yards per carry, Dowdle currently stands 19th across the NFL, ahead of flashier names like Joe Mixon, Alvin Kamara, David Montgomery, Najee Harris, Breece Hall, and even ex-Cowboy Tony Pollard.
Filter running backs by success rate, and it gets even better. That metric calculates how often a ballcarrier gains at least 40% of the yards required on first down, 60% on second down, and 100% on third or fourth down.
Dowdle’s success rate of 55.4% puts him 10th in the league. That kind of clip makes his limited usage- just 83 rushing attempts (36th place) and only 374 rushing yards (35th place)- seem like outright negligence on the part of the Dallas coaching staff.
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Many have blamed that reluctance to let Rico run on some assumed mandate from the front office to lean on Elliott, the two-time rushing rushing champ, fan favorite, and prodigal son who returned to the team in 2024 after an obvious decline led to his release in early 2023. Elliott is having a career-worst season production-wise and has reportedly been enough of a distraction that he was made inactive and left in Dallas for a Week 9 away game.
Cook was signed late in the preseason but stashed on the practice squad until Week 8. While the hope was that Cook would be some sort of savior by providing fresh legs midway through the schedule, his performance has only emphasized why the Cowboys should have made a bid during free agency for Derrick Henry, Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, or the aforementioned Mixon (all top-10 rushers currently).
Vaughn simply doesn’t look like a legitimate NFL running back (and that’s not a cheap shot at his height), and Luepke was never meant to be a volume rusher.
Dowdle is the lead back in Dallas… but not only because the team has no other choice (save for the practice squad’s Malik Davis, who hasn’t logged a carry since the finale of the 2022 regular season). Though he’s had to claw for every snap and even stand by during an unexpected inactive declaration in San Francisco due to a mystery illness, Dowdle, the undrafted free agent out of South Carolina, now leads the Cowboys- and by a lot- in rushing attempts and rushing yards. And he’s top-five on the team in receptions and receiving yards, too.
It’s shaping up to be a lost season for the Cowboys, but with eight games still left to play, it’s become clear that Rico Dowdle will be one of the keys to whatever glimmers of success the team is able to eke out.
And now, it seems, that’s finally clear enough for McCarthy to say out loud.
“Got to get him the ball,” the coach said Thursday. “That’s my focus, just continue to give him opportunities.”
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