Tag: Ezekiel Elliott

‘Zeke’s not going anywhere’ early Cowboys theme, never changed tune

The Cowboys were unable to get a running game going against Minnesota, but that didn’t stop them from pounding Ezekiel Elliott anyway.

Of all the maddening storylines of Sunday night’s 28-24 loss to Minnesota, the Cowboys’ stubborn insistence on sticking with a rushing attack that simply wasn’t working is near the very top of the list. But that failure in and of itself has two different components to it. There’s the playcalling from coach Jason Garrett and offensive coordinator Kellen Moore. And yes, that was atrociously bad in key moments. But there’s also the ineffectiveness of the players actually executing those ground game plays, namely, defending rushing champ Ezekiel Elliott. And that’s the thing that might actually be more concerning for this team in the long run.

The Cowboys have made it clear since his rookie year in 2016 that Elliott is the centerpiece of the offense. With two rushing titles in three seasons (and an equally torrid pace in the season he was suspended for six games), the former top-five draft pick has performed like it, mostly. The message in Dallas is clear: when you play the Cowboys, you’re going to get a heavy dose of No. 21.

But according to owner and general manager Jerry Jones, a different message was broadcast early in Sunday night’s contest.

“You just basically could have put a sign on the start of the game that said ‘Zeke’s not going anywhere,'” Jones told the media after the loss in which Elliott gained just 47 rushing yards despite 20 carries, an average of 2.35 yards per run. “And that was the story of the game.”

“It’s definitely frustrating, Elliott said after the game, his fifth (including playoffs) as a Cowboy in which he gained under 50 yards on the ground. “They’re a pro team, too; they did a good job bottling up the run. They were better than us.”

Wideout Amari Cooper, despite his own performance filled with good numbers and highlight-reel catches, shared in that disappointment.

“It’s very frustrating,” Cooper told reporters. “We love to run the ball here. That’s part of our identity. So when a team takes that away, we’re limited. We have the best running back in the league, so…” Cooper trailed off, seemingly at a loss, before summing up, “We just have to be better.”

Last year’s midseason acquisition of Cooper as a legitimate downfield threat was- theoretically- supposed to not only make it easier for Elliott to find some running room, but also reduce his workload. After nine games thus far in 2019, Elliott has 788 yards on 178 rushing attempts, a per-carry average of 4.4 yards. Nine games into last season, Elliott had 168 carries for 831 yards and a 4.9 average. The first seven of those games came without Cooper on the team.

So let’s review. This season has Amari Cooper in the huddle, Michael Gallup no longer a secret, Randall Cobb in the slot, Jason Witten running Y-options again, Travis Frederick back on the O-line, Tony Pollard providing a speedy change of pace, and wunderkind Kellen Moore dialing up an offense that was supposed to be versatile and multifaceted. Yet in 2019, Elliott is actually getting more chances and doing less with them.

Is this pushing the panic button in the immediate wake of a demoralizing loss? Perhaps in part; no one was all that worried about an Elliott decline last week after he ripped off 139 on the ground in New York and averaged six yards per tote. Much of Monday morning’s concerns are indeed a direct result of Sunday night’s opponent.

“I think it’s definitely one of the best defenses we’ve played this season,” Elliott admitted of the Vikings squad. “Definitely, run defense did a great job just neutralizing our run and really giving us nowhere all day to run the ball.”

“Obviously, there was a lot of attention there,” Garrett told the press of Minnesota’s focus on Elliott. “They have a really good front, and they have good linebackers. They’re a good run defense. They were trying to make sure that they stopped the run. I thought that we did a good job responding to that; we were pretty effective throwing the football.”

Pretty effective. Quarterback Dak Prescott finished the night 28-of-46 for 397 yards and three touchdowns to three different receivers. He took just one sack and logged only one interception, the failed Hail Mary as time expired. Yes, Prescott was “pretty effective.” And that’s what made the coaching staff’s blind allegiance to the middling rushing attack so difficult to watch, especially after the passing game had put the Cowboys in a position to win the game late.

With under two minutes to play, down by four, and on the Minnesota 11-yard-line, Dallas ran Elliott on second down for no gain. And then again on third down for a three-yard loss. Prescott, incidentally, had gone 6-for-7 and 79 yards through the air on the drive up to that point.

So after the rally ultimately fell short, everyone with a microphone and a notepad wanted to grill the Cowboys players, coaches, and brass about why they seemingly took the ball out of Prescott’s hands in crunch time.

“You want to attack different ways,” Garrett said. “It’s important for us to continue to try to run the ball. In normal circumstances, you would think if we give it to Zeke a couple times, second and inside of two yards, we’re going to make that first down. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in this game.”

“You ask that offensive line, you ask the running back, they’re going to say that they need to execute those plays,” Prescott stated in his postgame press conference. “We get that first down, nobody in here’s even talking about [how] they took the ball out of my hands, right?”

But Elliott didn’t get the first down. Either time. And so everyone is, in fact, talking about how the coaches seemingly took the ball out of Prescott’s hands.

Jones was blunt when asked about the ill-fated decision to force the run late.

“I’m not going to get into that,” he said. “Since it didn’t work, we’d all like to have that back. But you’ve got to keep trying.”

It appears that Garrett and Moore will do exactly that, no matter the opponent, no matter the situation, no matter if it’s working or not.

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Cowboys won’t question play calling; Garrett says ‘we had options’

While the team wouldn’t cast doubt on the playcalls in the Week 10 loss, coach Jason Garrett revealed more about their ill-fated late runs.

From the moment Kellen Moore was named the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator, the questions started. Who would actually be calling the plays? What plays would they use? Would it be all flea-flickers and Statues of Liberty as Moore reached back into his Boise State bag of tricks? Or would Moore just trot out the same predictably ineffective Scott Linehan/Jason Garrett plays that were already in place?

In the wake of a disheartening loss to the Minnesota Vikings, playcalling is once again the focus. The Cowboys were positioned to pull off a dramatic comeback after being behind for most of the game, with the ball deep in enemy territory and down by four points with under two minutes to play. That’s when the passing game that had found success all night was inexplicably shelved for consecutive runs by Ezekiel Elliott that lost three yards and wasted almost 50 seconds of precious time. The sequence put the Cowboys in a fourth-down situation where a pass was expected by everyone, including Vikings linebacker Eric Kendricks, who tipped the throw away and ended the Dallas drive 14 yards away from the end zone.

So who’s to blame? In a phone interview on Monday morning, coach Jason Garrett made it clear who’s selecting the plays.

“Kellen’s calling the game,” Garrett told 105.3 The Fan, “and in that situation, it’s 2nd-and-2. And he felt like he had a good opportunity against a favorable box to run the ball in those situations. On each of those plays, we had options beyond just the run. And unfortunately, we weren’t able to convert. We got into that 4th-down situation; we didn’t convert that.”

Garrett’s answer was interesting in several ways. First, it confirmed that Moore is the one actually dialing up the plays off the big laminated sheet, or at least the majority of them. Garrett still retains oversight, not just philosophically, but even on the sideline as the game is being played.

“We just try to communicate as an offensive staff throughout the ballgame,” Garrett explained, “and Kellen’s done a great job for us all year long. And I certainly have input throughout the ballgame. Situationally, I have input about how to handle certain situations. That’s how we’ve operated all year long, and that’s how we operated last night, and unfortunately we didn’t get it done.”

But the second part of Garrett’s answer is also telling. Quarterback Dak Prescott “had options beyond just the run,” according to the coach.

He had said as much in his postgame press conference late Sunday night.

“There are a number of different options on that play based on what they play,” Garrett told reporters. “If they heat you up, you have some answers. If they play a certain kind of zone, you have some answers. If they play man-to-man, you have some answers. So we wanted to give Dak some different options, depending on what they were going to play on a critical down situation.”

After the game, Elliott said of the play, “It was just an RPO [run-pass option]. It was a give read. There really wasn’t anywhere to go.”

That was the story all game, as Elliott finished with a mere 47 rushing yards on 20 attempts. With Prescott finding far more success through the air- 397 yards and three touchdowns- the obvious question swirling around Cowboys Nation is: why not just let Prescott continue to lay waste with his military-grade flamethrower instead of continually coming back to a pea-shooter that had been firing blanks all night?

It’s a matter of strategy. Some coaches tend to seek out an opponent’s weakness and then pull out whatever tool from their bag will work best to exploit that weakness. Others seem to want to establish an identity and then hammer it home, whatever it is… and whether it’s working or not. It feels like Garrett is firmly entrenched in the latter category. He wants the Cowboys to be a tough, physical football team who will run it right down anybody’s throat. So he does. Even if the passing game is doing all the damage in a certain matchup. It’s “we’re-going-to-do-this-because-it’s-who-we-are” versus “we’re-going-to-do-that-because-it’s-working.”

Prescott put it up 46 times Sunday night, Garrett explained on The Fan, to just 22 rushing attempts. He clearly wanted more balance, because in his world, balance is just objectively good. Maybe, but most who watched this particular game felt like one or two more throws (and one or two fewer runs) would have actually won it for Dallas.

Prescott was careful on Sunday night when asked if he wished Moore and Garrett had kept the ball in his hands with a pass on every play of the ill-fated second-to-last drive. “It’s safe to say I’ll throw the ball every play of the game,” Prescott smiled. “That’s the obvious part, right? So, for sure.”

But as Garrett explained during his radio interview, Prescott did have at least the option to throw on the run plays in question. So for fans looking to place blame after a difficult defeat, it seems there needs to be some to go around: some for Moore for calling the plays, some for Garrett for not stepping in and suggesting something else based on the situation, and some for Prescott for the option he finally went with as the plays unfolded.

“That’s the way we evaluate everything,” Garrett said Monday. “We’ll go in today- win, lose, or draw- and we say, ‘Okay, what was good about the game? Okay, let’s continue to build on that. What were areas that we as coaches need to do a better job? Maybe we didn’t communicate it well enough, maybe we didn’t practice it well enough, maybe it just wasn’t executed. I’m not talking about those specific plays, but that’s generally how you approach it.”

How to divvy up the blame for the Vikings loss may be up for debate, but one thing that was unanimous was the players’ reactions to any queries casting aspersions on the team’s playcalling or the coaches responsible.

“I’m not going to question the playcalling,” Prescott said. “There were opportunities; we’ve just got to do better and execute those plays, simple as that. And every guy in that locker room would say that.”

Wide receiver Randall Cobb did in his postgame comments. “I don’t call the plays. That’s not my job. My job is to make the plays and execute the plays that are called. The play that’s called is the play that we go out there and run, and we’ve got to make it happen on the field.”

“We would never question Kellen’s calls,” tight end Jason Witten said at his locker Sunday night. “That’s been a good run for us in third-and-short, kind of spreading them out this season, and kind of find[ing] the soft spot. Zeke does such a good job, Dak, they’re kind of used to running that type of play… That’s been a good play for us. I’m not surprised that he went back to that.”

Deep down, Cowboys fans weren’t surprised either. It’s just that they wanted to be. Because for all the early questions about the new-look Dallas offense and the glimpses of brilliance that peek through now and again, when the team had a do-or-die shot at punching it in, the answers they got were the same ones they’d been hearing for years.

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Ezekiel Elliott has no answers after going stagnant in Cowboys loss to the Vikings

What I’m Hearing: Jori Epstein spoke to Ezekiel Elliott following the Cowboys loss to the Vikings on Sunday night and the running back had no explanation for his poor performance.

What I’m Hearing: Jori Epstein spoke to Ezekiel Elliott following the Cowboys loss to the Vikings on Sunday night and the running back had no explanation for his poor performance.

11 Takeaways: Cowboys run narrative into ground, pass on path to victory

The Cowboys yet again failed to get the job done against another top-team, falling 28-24 to the Minnesota Vikings.

The Cowboys can’t seem to do themselves any favors, once again starting slow and digging themselves into a hole which ultimately did them in. They were down two touchdowns before the first quarter ended, but managed to briefly take the lead 21-20 halfway through the third quarter.

Unfortunately, they yet again found themselves on the wrong end of a shootout against one of the better teams in the league. Dallas fell, 28-24, to the Minnesota Vikings, dropping their record to 5-4 on the season. It was a game they rarely looked like things would go their way.

It was over when . . .

. . . Eric Kendricks broke up Dak Prescott’s attempt on 4th and 5 from the Minnesota 14. The Cowboys looked to be in the catbird seat, having drove from their own six to the Minnesota 11, but two Ezekiel Elliott runs pushed them back, and against the wall. Unfortunately, Prescott couldn’t bail them out, after playing so well for the entire game.

Game balls

WR Amari Cooper

It’s impossible to overstate how much Cooper transformed this offense. He had another monster night, catching 11 passes for 147 yards and one touchdown. He was able to showcase everything against the Vikings secondary, but his dramatic sideline toe-taps were the plays that really stood out.

QB Dak Prescott

The best season of Prescott’s career took another step, as he put up a valiant effort in yet another comeback that fell just short. He took it upon himself to throw Dallas back into the game, fearlessly throwing into tight windows and converting third down after third down.

In the end, he threw for 397 yards on 28 of 46 pass attempts, three touchdowns, and one interception (on the last play of the game, a heave into the end zone). The results haven’t been there yet, but these moments and games will soon pay off in the last half of the season.

WR Randall Cobb

It’s been a tough go for the former Packer, but Cobb was able to put together a really nice game, joining Cooper in eclipsing 100 receiving yards (106 on six catches), a feat he accomplished for the first time this season. His beautiful 22-yard touchdown grab at the end of the second quarter made up for the many near-misses that have marred the first half of his season.

Key stat: 2.35

Ezekiel Elliott entered the game averaging 4.7 yards-per-carry this season, yet registered only 2.35 YPC against Minnesota. That didn’t stop the Cowboys from running him 20 times however. The run game was atrocious and entirely unhelpful, seemingly costing the team big, especially considering how well they were able to throw the ball. As a team, they recorded only 50 rushing yards, the second-lowest total of the season (45 in Week 4 vs New Orleans).

Quick takes:

  • As poorly as the Cowboys ran the ball, it was the opposite story for Minnesota. Vikings RB Dalvin Cook rumbled all over the Dallas defense, reminiscent of C.J. Anderson’s performance against them in the playoffs last year. In total, the Vikings ran for 156 total yards, Cook responsible for 97 of them.If only Dallas had a highly-drafted defensive tackle to plug the middle of the defensive line.
  • The Cowboys possess one of the more unique weapons in the NFL in the leg of K Brett Maher. Unfortunately tonight, it seemed to cost them points, as Jason Garrett decided to try a 57-yard field goal that missed badly. It set up Minnesota with a short field, who had no problems marching 53-yards on their first drive of the game to go up 7-0. Situational football has been a problem for the Cowboys this season, and this was yet another example of this team holding itself back..
  • Minnesota’s Kyle Rudolph only had 14 receiving yards, but he was a huge difference maker, scoring two touchdowns and picking up a two-point conversion. His success against the Cowboys secondary was unfortunately unsurprising and predictable, as they’ve seemed to have a lot of trouble containing TEs this season.

  • The Dallas offense converted more than half of their third down opportunities (9 of 15, 60%), which normally leads to success. Unfortunately, the Vikings essentially matched them, converting 8 of 14 third downs (57%).
  • Perhaps the most frustrating and inexplicable moment of the game occurred when WR Tavon Austin signaled for a fair catch despite having tons of real estate in front of him at the end of the game. Minnesota was giving the ball back to the Cowboys, punting from their own 10-yard line with 24 seconds left. If there was ever a time for for Austin to have his signature moment with Dallas, this seemed like it. Apparently, the coaches didn’t let him try.

  • The Cowboys are now tied for first place in the NFC East at 5-4. They’ll try to again separate themselves from the Philadelphia against another NFC North opponent next week in the Detroit Lions, who are 3-5-1.