FRISCO — On Saturday, the Cowboys revealed the running back plans for the 2024 season. Welcome to the committee.
Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy said the team will use a committee of running backs as part of the offense. Now this could change if Tony Dorsett or Emmitt Smith come out of retirement.
Last we checked, both men are quite comfortable watching football games over putting their bodies in harm’s way of oncoming defenders.
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The Cowboys will start Ezekiel Elliott at running back with Malik Davis and Rico Dowdle getting some carries. Stephen Jones, the executive vice president, said the team isn’t done searching for another running back. So Davis and Dowdle probably need strong training camps to maintain their spot on the 53-man roster.
However, a trade for a running back might prompt change.
When it comes to the starting running back on this team, McCarthy said it wasn’t right to ask Elliott, who is third in franchise history in rushing yards, to become the man again.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” he said. “What do you mean? The guy carried the ball more than anybody in the history of football in the first couple of years. That’s not going to be his role, we’re a running back by committee. He’ll definitely play at the level that he’s played at in my time here. I anticipate that. I don’t see any drop off in the way he moves.”
What’s needed is for Elliott to get no more than 10-15 touches a game and then let others take over.
Cowboys officials saw a spry Elliott toward the end of the 2023 season with the Patriots. He carried the ball 184 times with 190 carries estimated as the max.
Gone are the days with Elliott getting 200-plus carries.
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The last time the Cowboys had a leading rusher with fewer than 200 carries was Tony Pollard in 2022. Elliott, incidentally, carried the ball 231 times that season.
It’s also been a long time since the Cowboys had a committee of running backs. DeMarco Murray, Felix Jones and Tashard Choice were a nice little committee in the 2010s. But in 2016, Elliott came along and brought the Cowboys back to the past.
You remember that, don’t you? It’s when running backs carry the ball 20-25 times a game. Those days are gone, too.
Well at least for some teams.
“Hey don’t get me wrong, they all like to carry the ball like the old days and have those touches,” McCarthy said. “You want those guys fresh at the most important time of the year, that’s all part of planning and how you look at the projections in place.”
Last year the NFL saw 23 different teams with a rusher get more than 200 carries and in 2022 there were 21 backs with 200 or more carries. So reaching 200 carries means something in this league, especially with more than half the teams finding a player to hit that mark.
The Cowboys could use three running backs combining for 200 or more carries in a season and add quarterback Dak Prescott, receivers KaVontae Turpin and CeeDee Lamb and you could get to 225 total running plays.
If we had questions about why the Cowboys signed Elliott to a one-year deal, just listening to how McCarthy will use him eased any issues.
We were wrong about Elliott. Bringing him back to the Cowboys is best, especially after they didn’t draft a running back.
If Elliott gets 160-180 carries in 2024, that’s fine. There’s no thought he’s going to lead the NFL in rushing again. He just needs to get the offense moving along in McCarthy’s pass-happy offense.
And McCarthy is familiar with running back committees, using one in 2005 as the offensive coordinator with the 49ers as Frank Gore and Kevan Barlow took care of the run game.
“The way we’re looking at it right now there’s been some of that and a lot of teams do that and do it successfully,” Jones said of running back committees. “A lot of teams kinda move toward that because of the wear and tear that comes with this league. As I said too, we’re not done yet, continue to look at players, look for ways not only the running back spot but any other position on this team.”