Hogs Haven
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The Cowboys have a lot of problems right now and many of them aren’t even what is happening on the actual field.
The Dallas Cowboys are a mess in almost facet of football, and that includes on and off the field. Their 27-21 loss to the Atlanta Falcons demonstrated just how far this team has fallen, and no matter how they try, they can’t seem to get out of their own way. They lost the battle and likely the war, falling to 3-5 and four games behind the Washington Commanders in the NFC East. Adding injury to the insulting performance of Sunday is Dak Prescott suffering a hamstring injury that will keep him off the field for some time, as well as an apparent shoulder injury to CeeDee Lamb. Prescott was forced out of the game, giving way to Cooper Rush. Meanwhile, Lamb was obviously uncomfortable for most of the game’s closing stages, and his injury status is murky. The Cowboys are riddled with injuries, but that’s not the primary reason why this team looks almost unrecognizable.
[T]hings are amiss. Discipline is the chief concern. Dallas struggles to do the most elementary football things well on a play-by-play basis. The reason for it has been discussed ad nauseam this season: distractions. Internally, the team is in shambles. From Jerry Jones losing his composure with local radio hosts and threatening their jobs, or their players being reprimanded for a lack of professionalism. On Saturday, the team announced that running back Ezekiel Elliott would not travel with the team to Atlanta and was made inactive for Sunday’s game due to disciplinary reasons. We later learned that it was because of a continual pattern of missing meetings and arriving late at the team facility.
Assuming Prescott is out for a while and goes on injured reserve, the team needs to send a series of messages, if not just one, if the team responds to the first: Cut Ezekiel Elliott. Countless metrics and statistics have shown that he is a bottom-tier runner in the NFL. His lack of explosiveness and elusiveness capsizes the offense that has to fight desperately for ever blade of synthetic grass from down to down to stay ahead of the sticks. He has the lowest success rate of his career as a runner and offers nothing as a receiver. Off the field, he hasn’t been able to be relied upon to report to work on time and not miss meetings, which has been revealed this week. Elliott’s presence is a beacon of misplaced fellowship between him and the front office that offers a negative outcome in the locker room and on the field. By severing ties with Elliott, hopefully, for good, it informs the team that there are...
