Cowboys running backs Ezekiel Elliott, Rico Dowdle among NFL’s least efficient through Week 2

A lot of things went wrong for the Dallas Cowboys last week. Picking and choosing just one thing to focus on would be like asking the kids to select a single candy out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. There are too many options, but unlike there, none of these are delicious.

Losing 44-19 (a scorigami, at least) forces you to reevaluate anything and everything in the name of never letting it happen to you again. We needn’t assume everything will be broken forever and ever, but with two games now played this season we can start to draw legitimate conclusions about the 2024 edition of this club.

One of the things that we all (generally) had concerns about from the moment the offseason began was the running game. Those concerns still exist through two contests.

The Dallas Cowboys have one of the least efficient running back rooms in the NFL and that is a problem

We live in a day and age where we have access to so much information. Going off of things like total yards in 2024 is akin to starting a fire with sticks and coconut husks. This is an advanced moment in time, not the fire-making challenge that everybody hates in the new era of Survivor, which means we can look deeper under the hood.

For overall context’s sake here are the raw rushing numbers from everybody who has registered a carry for the Cowboys so far this season, courtesy of Pro Football Reference.

Obviously with Dallas getting boat-raced on Sunday the opportunities for running the ball, establishing your will and all that jazz, were far and few in between. But it does not take any level of advanced analysis to see that neither Ezekiel Elliott nor Rico Dowdle have set the world on fire through two games. But it is only two games.

The most recent performance from Elliott and Dowdle is what has people wondering whether a change is necessary. Consider that Jerry Jones was asked during his Tuesday appearance on 105.3 The Fan about whether or not the team was considering promoting Dalvin Cook to the roster from the practice squad this week. That sounds unlikely.

Cook is hardly a hero waiting in the wings to save this group, but we are at a point where almost any alternative to the current plan should be considered. This is not hyperbolic to say at Week 3’s beginning. The Cowboys are in serious need of help.

How can we discern this, though? We have noted that we are not going to overreact to anything. But looking beyond the general box score-type statistics we can see that the Cowboys have literally the most efficient running back room in the entire league.

Among qualified rushers, they are the only team in the league to have two ball-carriers in the bottom ten of RYOE per attempt, per NFL Pro.

This is Very Not Good! What’s particularly frustrating about it is that it was completely and totally predictable which is why there were so many calls for the Cowboys to add talent to the running back group in free agency or the NFL Draft.

It is easy to say this in hindsight obviously, but it was very apparent as it was all happening. Consider the options that Dallas could have in their backfield right now if they had chosen to be a bit more proactive in this regard.

It is unfortunate that this is the case because Elliott and Dowdle both appear to be hard workers who will do more than is asked of them, but the data shows that they do not have the same sort of juice that other running backs in today’s NFL do. They are running quite literally uphill in many senses.

Again, we are only two games into the season, but consider that of the same pool of qualified rushers where we generated our RYOE/Attempt numbers that there are only six ball-carriers who have yet to register a rush of 10 or more yards this season:

• Ezekiel Elliott, 16 total carries, Dallas Cowboys
• D’Onta Foreman, 14 total carries, Cleveland Browns (Only 1 game played)
• Javonte Williams, 19 total carries, Denver Broncos
• Kyren Williams, 30 total carries, Los Angeles Rams
• Zach Charbonnet, 22 total carries, Seattle Seahawks
• Trey Benson, 14 total carries, Arizona Cardinals

Consider that there are eight more players with only a single rush of over 10+ yards and that Rico Dowdle is on that list (Dallas has three of these plays total and the other two belong to CeeDee Lamb). If the point isn’t obvious to you right now, this group is not yielding positive or explosive results.

Here are some more ways in which the Dallas Cowboys are failing as a running operation (rank in terms of 1st being the worst):

• Rush Yards Per Game…………………………………….. 85 (8th)
• Rush Yards Per Play………………………………………… 3.7 (7th)
• Team Rushing Success Rate……………………………. 37% (9th)
• Team Rushing Yards Over Expected………………… -66 (2nd)
• Team Rushing Yards Over Expected/Attempt…… -1.5 (1st)

Those last two points are what is particularly damning of the overall operation. When you hear that the run game is struggling maybe your mind wanders to the fact that Dallas has two rookies starting along the offensive line in Tyler Guyton and Cooper Beebe. It would be normal and arguably expected for them to struggle. Maybe this is their fault, literally speaking.

But that’s where RYOE comes in handy to help us filter our thoughts out. Consider exactly how NFL Pro defines RYOE:

“The difference between actual rushing yards and expected rushing yards on an individual play or series of play.”

The entire purpose of this statistical measurement is to tell us what ball-carriers should be doing with the opportunities they are given. Whether those opportunities are stout or stingy is a different matter, but being able to make the proverbial lemonade is something that players are asked to do and Cowboys ball-carriers are not making any.

To be entirely clear and fair, this measurement assesses all ball-carriers so the failed end around from Brandin Cooks (really, Jalen Brooks) against New Orleans is also factored in and weighing things down. But that is hardly enough on its own to drag Dallas so far down into the dumps in these kinds of areas. The Cowboys have a serious issue on the ground, you likely did not need any advanced analysis to know that.

The room at large needs help and it is unlikely that Dalvin Cook can provide it. Proper time to address this is well in the rearview mirror, the time now is either for the Cowboys to magically get significantly better in this regard or trot out more of the same.

Which do you think will be the case?