Another top-5 running back could be mulling a holdout. Ezekiel Elliott hasn’t said anything publicly, but Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk reports a league source has told him that Elliott privately says he won’t be at training camp until he gets a new deal.
This report comes after last week’s story that Melvin Gordon says the Chargers won’t see him until he gets a new contract.
Elliott has more leverage. With the Chargers, they went 4-0 in the games Gordon missed last year. They could get by reasonably well, for the short-term at least, with a combination of Austin Ekeler and Justin Jackson. Ekeler is one of the best change-of-pace backs in the league, while Jackson can provide a little more of the heavy lifting. If Gordon opts to stay away, the Chargers probably will be content to let him sweat by maintaining they’ll be comfortable with a Jackson-Ekeler backfield.
The Cowboys don’t have that luxury. They’re counting on a pair of unheralded rookies to be their primary backup running backs. They drafted Tony Pollard in the fourth round, but he was more of a utility back at Memphis, running for 552 yards last year. They added Mike Weber of Ohio State in the seventh round. It’s also an offense heavily built on the running game (unlike in Los Angeles).
Dallas has been concentrating on trying to sign Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper to extensions; they’re both entering the final seasons of their rookie contracts. The PFT report suggests Elliott wants his own contract situation moved off the back burner.
The 4th pick of the 2016 draft, Elliott signed a slotted four-year contract worth $24.9 million as a rookie. He’s slated to make $3.8 million this season. The Cowboys also will be able to lock up Elliott for the 2020 season by using the fifth-year option. Elliott was a top-10 pick, so he’d be assured of making the average of the 10 highest paid running backs of the 2019 season. With there not being many highly compensated running backs, that would also be a modest, below-market contract.
Elliott could reasonably be worried that the current labor deal is stacked against him. He’ll be heavily used the next two years, and if he breaks down in that time, the Cowboys will kick him to the curb without ever truly seeing a big payday. If he plays well, he still might never see his true worth – the Cowboys might tie him up with their franchise tag prior to the 2021 season. The current CBA is not set up well for the running back position; the owners tend to hold the key bargaining chips.
One could reasonably argue that Elliott is a better player than both Prescott and Cooper. If those players were thrown back into the draft, probably all 32 teams would select Elliott before either of them. But with how the CBA is set up, with franchise and transition tags and what other teams are spending at that position, Prescott likely will get paid a lot more than Elliott, and Cooper might also land a larger contract.
To me, the idea of Elliott making $10 million per year less than Prescott is ridiculous. If he's not willing to live with that, they could have a problem signing him.
I don’t expect either Elliott or Gordon to pull a LeVeon Bell, holding out into the regular season. If I were drafting today, I would select them pretty much as if they weren’t holding out at all. Maybe you push them back a notch or two if you’ve got a back of similar value. For me, Elliott definitely is still in that group of top-4 running backs. And Gordon is still definitely in that next tier.
Over the last three years, only six running backs have started at least half the time and averaged over 20 PPR points per game. Elliott and Gordon are two of them.
| TAILBACKS PER GAME (last 3 years) | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rk | Player | St | No | Rec | Run | Tot | TD | PPR |
| 1. | LeVeon Bell | 27 | 5.9 | 47 | 95 | 142 | .74 | 24.6 |
| 2. | Alvin Kamara | 28 | 5.4 | 52 | 55 | 108 | 1.11 | 23.1 |
| 3. | Ezekiel Elliott | 40 | 3.4 | 30 | 101 | 131 | .85 | 21.6 |
| 4. | Todd Gurley | 45 | 3.7 | 38 | 76 | 114 | 1.02 | 21.4 |
| 5. | David Johnson | 33 | 4.1 | 42 | 67 | 109 | .91 | 20.6 |
| 6. | Melvin Gordon | 41 | 3.6 | 34 | 73 | 107 | .93 | 20.0 |
| 7. | Kareem Hunt | 26 | 3.0 | 32 | 81 | 113 | .92 | 19.9 |
| 8. | Devonta Freeman | 32 | 3.0 | 25 | 63 | 88 | .66 | 15.7 |
| 9. | LeSean McCoy | 45 | 3.2 | 23 | 65 | 88 | .56 | 15.4 |
| 10. | DeMarco Murray | 31 | 3.0 | 21 | 63 | 84 | .61 | 15.1 |
| 11. | Mark Ingram | 43 | 2.9 | 21 | 62 | 82 | .63 | 15.0 |
| 12. | Carlos Hyde | 36 | 2.6 | 15 | 64 | 80 | .61 | 14.3 |
| 13. | Latavius Murray | 31 | 2.0 | 15 | 62 | 77 | .77 | 14.3 |
| 14. | Joe Mixon | 28 | 2.6 | 21 | 64 | 85 | .46 | 13.9 |
| 15. | Jordan Howard | 45 | 1.5 | 11 | 73 | 85 | .56 | 13.3 |
| 16. | C.J. Anderson | 25 | 1.9 | 15 | 70 | 84 | .44 | 13.1 |
| 17. | Lamar Miller | 44 | 2.1 | 15 | 67 | 82 | .41 | 12.8 |
| 18. | Dion Lewis | 27 | 3.1 | 21 | 49 | 70 | .41 | 12.5 |
| 19. | James White | 46 | 4.4 | 38 | 17 | 54 | .43 | 12.4 |
| 20. | Tarik Cohen | 32 | 3.9 | 34 | 25 | 59 | .38 | 12.3 |
| 21. | Tevin Coleman | 28 | 2.1 | 27 | 37 | 64 | .61 | 12.2 |
| 22. | Chris Thompson | 35 | 3.7 | 32 | 24 | 56 | .34 | 11.3 |
| 23. | Theo Riddick | 40 | 4.2 | 30 | 20 | 50 | .28 | 10.9 |
| 24. | Frank Gore | 46 | 1.7 | 14 | 59 | 73 | .28 | 10.7 |
| 25. | Adrian Peterson | 25 | 1.3 | 11 | 62 | 74 | .32 | 10.6 |
| 26. | Duke Johnson | 48 | 3.6 | 34 | 19 | 53 | .23 | 10.4 |
| 27. | Doug Martin | 27 | 1.4 | 12 | 54 | 66 | .37 | 10.2 |
| 28. | Isaiah Crowell | 29 | 1.7 | 12 | 53 | 65 | .28 | 9.9 |
| 29. | Derrick Henry | 46 | .8 | 7 | 49 | 55 | .48 | 9.2 |
| 30. | Giovani Bernard | 36 | 3.0 | 25 | 24 | 49 | .19 | 9.1 |
| 31. | LeGarrette Blount | 48 | .5 | 3 | 49 | 52 | .54 | 9.0 |
| 32. | Corey Clement | 27 | 1.2 | 12 | 21 | 33 | .30 | 6.4 |
—Ian Allan