Cowboys Head Coach Mike McCarthy said in a media session yesterday that Running Back Ezekiel Elliott played most of the season with a torn PCL. Zeke reportedly injured his knee against the Carolina Panthers in Week 4.
According to McCarthy, the injury will not require surgery and will be fully healed by the start of the 2022 season with rest. But while that’s good news, it leaves some big questions about how Elliott was used throughout 2021.
Zeke did have one more big day last season after the injury; 110 rushing yards the following week against the giants. But from that point forward Elliott never got more than 18 carries in a game and often averaged well less than 4.0 yards per carry.
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The puzzling aspect of all this is that the Cowboys continued force Zeke into the offense instead of letting Tony Pollard take over. If rest is all that’s needed, as McCarthy suggested yesterday, then why not let Pollard be RB1 for a while and give Elliott exactly what the injury called for?
To be fair to all of our offensive skill players this year, offensive line issues certainly didn’t help rushing production. Between penalties that nullified good runs and poor blocking that didn’t allow for more, even an injured Elliott had his numbers hurt by the lack of consistent o-line performance in front of him.
In a way, those o-line issues did contribute to Elliott needing to stay on the field more. His exceptional pass blocking, which we witnessed several times throughout the year, was vital as opposing defenses blitzed to take advantage of missing and underperforming offensive linemen.
Nevertheless, the disparity in touches between and injured Elliott and the more explosive Pollard is hard to explain.
With over $30 million in dead money still on his contract in 2022, Ezekiel Elliott isn’t going anywhere this offseason. We can only hope that this injury was the real issue last season and that he will be back to his usual self next year.
