Getty Ezekiel Elliott is threatening to miss games for the Cowboys if he does not receive a new contract.
The Ezekiel Elliott contract holdout saga is dragging into its second week, and former Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams have made their opinion clear on what the Cowboys should do next: Just pay the man his money.
“There is only one player they need to pay, and that’s Ezekiel Elliott,” he said on ESPN’s “Get Up!” on Tuesday. “I think he’s doing the right thing by holding out, because…you can’t unspend money. You need that, teams do it all the time when they cut players who don’t live up to their contract, but what happens when you outplay your contract?”
Williams, the former first-round draft pick to Carolina in 2006, is pointing to Elliott’s superior production in his three seasons. The former Ohio State Buckeye has racked up 4,048 yards and 28 touchdowns on the ground, including a pair of seasons over 1,400 yards.
While a heavy workload (consecutive seasons with over 380 touches) is a cause for concern, Williams argued that Dallas doesn’t have another path to success other than Zeke.
“Cowboy Nation, if you want to win games this year, you’re going to need Ezekiel Elliott,” he continued. “You could do that without Dak Prescott…if you take Ezekiel Elliott away from this team, you have nothing.”
That assertion is not completely fair. Prescott nearly tossed for 4,000 yards last season, including 22 touchdowns and eight interceptions. With the midseason addition of Amari Cooper from Oakland, the passing offense simply isn’t the beneficiary of play-action with Elliott.
Randall Cobb and Allen Hurns are established supplementary pieces that won’t have the majority of the attention on them with Cooper on the field. With that said, both have to produce more than they did in 2018, as they combined for a little over 600 yards receiving.
Jason Witten is a future Hall of Famer, but after a year in the Monday Night Football both, is he ready to be the player he used to be? Outside of Cooper, Williams has a point about the potential of this offense without the balance the Elliott provides.
Jerry Jones: You Don’t Need a Rushing Champion to Win a Super Bowl’
According to our own Rich Durazzo, Elliott is still a no show at training camp. This doesn’t appear to be a concern for Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
“The point there is you don’t have to have a rushing champion to win a Super Bowl,” Jones told CBS 11 from the team’s training camp facility in Oxnard, California. “But Emmitt was the first one to do it.”
He’s referring to Emmitt Smith, who led the league in rushing twice during two of Dallas’ Super Bowl seasons in 1993 and 1995. Jones insists that the league has changed since then.
“That’s one of the dilemmas at running back, is that the league knows that you can win Super Bowls and not have the Emmitt Smith back there or the Zeke back there,” Jones said.
USA Today also points out Elliott’s history off the field, including domestic violence allegations in 2017. These lead to charges, but no discipline from the league. Issues of domestic abuse have not stopped Jones from signing players before, as he did with Greg Hardy in 2015.