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Kent Babb
June 22 at 9:17 AM
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IRVING, Tex. — He plunged into the crowd, leaning left and securing the cargo in his left arm as he made his move. Ezekiel Elliott corrected his balance, and a moment later, he had pushed through: home free.
Emerging from the shower facilities inside Dallas Cowboys headquarters, Elliott had his hands full with toiletries as he noticed and dashed through the group of reporters surrounding his locker. He’s used to this by now, hardly a rookie when it comes to being the target of attention.
“The hype,” he said, “is everywhere. It’s kind of hard to hide from it.”
It’s possible that Elliott, the 20-year-old Cowboys running back, is the most hyped player — particularly at his position — in the past decade. Not long after Dallas made Elliott the No. 4 overall pick in this year’s draft, either boldly or stubbornly defying a recent cultural shift away from selecting rushers in the top 10, he was compared most often with former MVP Adrian Peterson, an almost certain future Hall of Famer. Months before Elliott lines up for his first professional snap, the analytics website Pro Football Focus declared him a “near-lock” to be the 2016 rookie of the year.
Even Gary Brown, Dallas’s running backs coach, couldn’t help himself recently. After describing how the team’s first priority with Elliott is insulating him from unrealistic expectations and unfair pressure, Brown called his newest rusher the most complete rookie back he has ever seen.
“Clearly he’s that. Clearly,” said Brown, himself a former NFL running back. “Run, catch, block — he does it all.”
To be sure, Elliott was dazzling in two seasons as Ohio State’s starter: more than 1,800 rushing yards both years, anchoring a national championship roster as a sophomore, and emerging as perhaps the best, most willing college blocker since Miami’s Frank Gore.
Gore, it should be pointed out, was a third-round pick in 2005 — a future five-time Pro Bowl selection chosen in the draft’s middle rounds by San Francisco. So, three years later, was Kansas City’s Jamaal Charles, and in 2011 former Cowboys rusher DeMarco Murray. After a few years of such overachievers — and of top choices like Darren McFadden and Trent Richardson falling somewhere between labels of “disappointing” and “prodigious bust” — NFL front offices began treating running back as the most unpredictable, potentially volatile position in the draft.
Bill Belichick, after all, was going to Super Bowls with Stevan Ridley (a third-round pick in 2011) and Jonas Gray (undrafted in 2012); NFL executives and coaches were getting fired after gambling on the likes of Ronnie Brown (second overall in 2005) and Richardson (No. 3 in 2012). It didn’t help that rushers have, at an average of about 2 1/2 seasons, some of the briefest careers, and anyway, after a while teams and executives just learned to avoid staking their futures on running backs.
“The culture of the league,” said Stephen Jones, the Cowboys’ player personnel director, “has really turned toward being cautious toward taking running backs. They don’t have a long shelf life.”
From restraint to a roll of the dice
Jones, his boss and father Jerry Jones, and Dallas Coach Jason Garrett made an interesting decision a little more than a year ago. A few months after Murray led the NFL with 1,845 rushing yards, they opted to allow Murray to leave in free agency.
The Cowboys had, after years of taking chances to acquire high-profile skill position players — trading three draft picks for wideout Roy Williams in 2008 a few months after selecting running back Felix Jones out of Arkansas (Jerry Jones’s alma mater) in the first round — seemed in 2010 to settle, finally, into a period of discipline and stability.
Dallas stopped trading away high picks and instead used them to bolster the team’s foundation: offensive tackle Tyron Smith in 2011, center Travis Frederick in ’13 and guard Zack Martin two years ago; all three have been named to Pro Bowls, and the Cowboys possess arguably the NFL’s best offensive line. Tony Romo, when healthy, is one of the league’s best quarterbacks. Garrett, beginning his seventh season, is the longest-tenured Dallas coach since Tom Landry.
League insiders have praised Stephen Jones and Garrett for keeping Jerry Jones’s impulse buys mostly in check. They’ve been effective, even though it has sometimes been uncomfortable, such as when the elder Jones was overruled two years ago on drafting Johnny Manziel, or when he prevailed internally last year in signing the troubled pass-rusher Greg Hardy.
The Cowboys, riding that offensive line, Murray and Romo, went 12-4 in 2014 and had the league’s seventh-best attack. Then came the decision about Murray, who had approached an NFL single-season record with 392 rushing attempts. Modern thinking triumphed: The only thing riskier than drafting a top-10 running back was signing a well-used rusher to a big second contract.
Unpopular as it was in the Metroplex, the Cowboys had made a wise move: Murray, who signed a $25 million deal with Philadelphia, tallied his worst NFL season and has since been traded to Tennessee.
“We know what happens as they get older,” Stephen Jones said recently.
MORE OF ARTICLE
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June 22 at 9:17 AM
LINK
IRVING, Tex. — He plunged into the crowd, leaning left and securing the cargo in his left arm as he made his move. Ezekiel Elliott corrected his balance, and a moment later, he had pushed through: home free.
Emerging from the shower facilities inside Dallas Cowboys headquarters, Elliott had his hands full with toiletries as he noticed and dashed through the group of reporters surrounding his locker. He’s used to this by now, hardly a rookie when it comes to being the target of attention.
“The hype,” he said, “is everywhere. It’s kind of hard to hide from it.”
It’s possible that Elliott, the 20-year-old Cowboys running back, is the most hyped player — particularly at his position — in the past decade. Not long after Dallas made Elliott the No. 4 overall pick in this year’s draft, either boldly or stubbornly defying a recent cultural shift away from selecting rushers in the top 10, he was compared most often with former MVP Adrian Peterson, an almost certain future Hall of Famer. Months before Elliott lines up for his first professional snap, the analytics website Pro Football Focus declared him a “near-lock” to be the 2016 rookie of the year.
Even Gary Brown, Dallas’s running backs coach, couldn’t help himself recently. After describing how the team’s first priority with Elliott is insulating him from unrealistic expectations and unfair pressure, Brown called his newest rusher the most complete rookie back he has ever seen.
“Clearly he’s that. Clearly,” said Brown, himself a former NFL running back. “Run, catch, block — he does it all.”
To be sure, Elliott was dazzling in two seasons as Ohio State’s starter: more than 1,800 rushing yards both years, anchoring a national championship roster as a sophomore, and emerging as perhaps the best, most willing college blocker since Miami’s Frank Gore.
Gore, it should be pointed out, was a third-round pick in 2005 — a future five-time Pro Bowl selection chosen in the draft’s middle rounds by San Francisco. So, three years later, was Kansas City’s Jamaal Charles, and in 2011 former Cowboys rusher DeMarco Murray. After a few years of such overachievers — and of top choices like Darren McFadden and Trent Richardson falling somewhere between labels of “disappointing” and “prodigious bust” — NFL front offices began treating running back as the most unpredictable, potentially volatile position in the draft.
Bill Belichick, after all, was going to Super Bowls with Stevan Ridley (a third-round pick in 2011) and Jonas Gray (undrafted in 2012); NFL executives and coaches were getting fired after gambling on the likes of Ronnie Brown (second overall in 2005) and Richardson (No. 3 in 2012). It didn’t help that rushers have, at an average of about 2 1/2 seasons, some of the briefest careers, and anyway, after a while teams and executives just learned to avoid staking their futures on running backs.
“The culture of the league,” said Stephen Jones, the Cowboys’ player personnel director, “has really turned toward being cautious toward taking running backs. They don’t have a long shelf life.”
From restraint to a roll of the dice
Jones, his boss and father Jerry Jones, and Dallas Coach Jason Garrett made an interesting decision a little more than a year ago. A few months after Murray led the NFL with 1,845 rushing yards, they opted to allow Murray to leave in free agency.
The Cowboys had, after years of taking chances to acquire high-profile skill position players — trading three draft picks for wideout Roy Williams in 2008 a few months after selecting running back Felix Jones out of Arkansas (Jerry Jones’s alma mater) in the first round — seemed in 2010 to settle, finally, into a period of discipline and stability.
Dallas stopped trading away high picks and instead used them to bolster the team’s foundation: offensive tackle Tyron Smith in 2011, center Travis Frederick in ’13 and guard Zack Martin two years ago; all three have been named to Pro Bowls, and the Cowboys possess arguably the NFL’s best offensive line. Tony Romo, when healthy, is one of the league’s best quarterbacks. Garrett, beginning his seventh season, is the longest-tenured Dallas coach since Tom Landry.
League insiders have praised Stephen Jones and Garrett for keeping Jerry Jones’s impulse buys mostly in check. They’ve been effective, even though it has sometimes been uncomfortable, such as when the elder Jones was overruled two years ago on drafting Johnny Manziel, or when he prevailed internally last year in signing the troubled pass-rusher Greg Hardy.
The Cowboys, riding that offensive line, Murray and Romo, went 12-4 in 2014 and had the league’s seventh-best attack. Then came the decision about Murray, who had approached an NFL single-season record with 392 rushing attempts. Modern thinking triumphed: The only thing riskier than drafting a top-10 running back was signing a well-used rusher to a big second contract.
Unpopular as it was in the Metroplex, the Cowboys had made a wise move: Murray, who signed a $25 million deal with Philadelphia, tallied his worst NFL season and has since been traded to Tennessee.
“We know what happens as they get older,” Stephen Jones said recently.
MORE OF ARTICLE
(2 Segments Left)
