There will be one significant change during this week’s practice in Cowboys lines. Ezekiel Elliott will be joining the practice on Wednesday and Thursday until the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears his appeal. One thing is uncertain though, and it is Zeke’s playing status on next week’s game against the Atlanta Falcons.
The worst thing that can happen here is that if the three-judge panel rejects the request for a preliminary injunction, then Elliott’s pending six-game suspension starts immediately. Yes, Elliott, his lawyers, and the NFL player association might go for further litigation if the decision goes sideways but who knows how that would end. Coach Jason Garrett gave a statement saying “We anticipate him being here (Tuesday) and practicing through the week until there is some decision made,” and continued by saying “But again, we’re going to focus on what we can control in that situation. Zeke has done a really good job of that. Until someone tells us otherwise, we’ll proceed accordingly.”
Elliott is suffering a lot thanks to that pending suspension, and due to it he barely got eligible to play against the Kansas City Chiefs. His pick to play came late on Friday, but he managed to pull out something out of that game, and it was 93 yards on 27 carries with a touchdown. If you didn’t catch that match, the Cowboys crushed the Chiefs with a 28-17 score, for their third straight win. But Zeke is not the only one affected by this uncertainty. His replacements Alfred Morris, Rod Smith and Darren McFadden, are also afflicted, and they had to take the majority of work last week in practice before Elliot came back to the team.
In the same statement, Garrett addressed this issue as well, by saying “I think the biggest thing we try to do with everybody is we give everybody reps over the course of the week to get them prepared to play in the game. I don’t want to break down the rep numbers per offensive set for you, but suffice it to say, the backup running backs get work throughout the week in a given week. We don’t anticipate that changing, and we’ll just play the situation out day by day.”
We will hold our fingers crossed for the team and Ezekiel as well. Good luck man!
