Ezekiel Elliott has been warned he is not going to return to his dominant former self after he was released by the Dallas Cowboys on Wednesday.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones confirmed Elliott was being released by the franchise with which the running back has spent each of his seven NFL seasons as a member of. Dallas selected Elliott with the fourth overall pick in the 2016 NFL Draft, and he led the league in rushing yards per game for three successive seasons between 2016 and 2018.
The three-time Pro Bowler also led the NFL in rushing yards on two occasions, in 2016 and 2018. However, he endured a down season in 2022 and became the second-fiddle behind Tony Pollard in the Cowboys’ rushing attack.
As result, Elliott is coming off career lows in rushing attempts, rushing yards and rushing average, although he did manage to score 12 touchdowns this past season. While Dallas previously expressed an interest in retaining the 27-year-old, his contract and health played a part in the decision to let him go.
Elliott signed a six-year contract extension worth $90million in 2019, but he has declined since. A knee injury sidelined him for two games last season, and he wore a brace for the rest of the year after returning. Ultimately, NFL Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe believes the Cowboys made the correct decision.
“Meteoric rise, precipitous fall,” Shannon told Undisputed co-host Skip Bayless. “I’m not really surprised by this because we saw it coming. If you go back and study history and look at the running back position, they don’t normally lose it and get it back. He was a run into the collision back. He wasn’t a guy that dodged tackles. He wasn’t a guy that ran out of bounds and preserve himself, he was running to contact - he was a high-collision back.
“Every year for seven years [his rushing yards total] fell to the point where even when the number of games increased, he couldn’t crack a thousand yards, because his yards per game and yards per carry had dipped so low. He’s still a top back - but the money they were paying him, he was no longer a top back.”
While Sharpe praised Elliott’s reported immensely positive influence on the Dallas locker room, he believes the running back simply wasn’t worth the money he was earning. The 54-year-old added: “I don’t believe a whole lot Jerry [Jones] says, but I believe him when he says this was a very, very tough decision for him. I actually believe him because we saw the writing on the wall ever since he got the big deal - that he wasn’t the same back he was his first three years in the league. And every year from that point, it was decline, decline, decline, decline.
“They finally made the decision they were going to release Zeke - now I don’t know if they’re going to re-sign him at a lower number, but it seems to me like they’re moving on. What could have been? There’s no question, his first two years in the league, he was the best back in football and then it just [disappeared.”
According to Over the Cap, the move is expected to save the Cowboys more than $10m while the franchise tagged Pollard. The franchise tag guaranteed the 25-year-old a one-year tender at $10.1m.
Elliott is one of the best running backs in the Cowboys’ storied history. He has racked up 8,262 rushing yards in his career, which places him third on the all-time list in rushing for the franchise behind a pair of Hall of Famers in Emmitt Smith and Tony Dorsett.
