Dallas Cowboys offense shows it has weapons, but best option has yet to bust loose

For most of training camp the Dallas Cowboys talked up their hopes of using free agent wide receiver Tavon Austin like the big-play threat he was always expected to be as a first-round pick out of West Virginia in 2013.

They tried to get him involved last week against Carolina, but the offense couldn’t get out of its own way long enough to get him involved, much less anyone else.

Sunday night against the New York Giants, the Cowboys didn’t give themselves any time to sabotage the plan. On the third play from scrimmage, Austin raced past Kelvin Martin as Dak Prescott led him for a 64-yard touchdown pass.

“It was just a regular go route; just beat your man,” said Austin, who finished with two catches for 79 yards. “Dak gave me a chance, I made a good move at the line and just made a good catch and ran.”

Ezekiell Elliott had 78 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries. He also caught a team-high five passes, but for just nine yards. It’s the second consecutive game Elliott rushed for fewer than 80 yards. That’s the first time in his career with back-to-back sub-80-yard rushing games. Part of that smaller role can be attributed to Prescott rushing seven times for a career-high 45 yards. It can be argued, also, that the Cowboys’ run game is better served in the long run by showing the ability to get Austin involved and for Prescott to show the threat to run.

“I think if you utilize his full skill set, certainly it is [a more potent offense],” Cowboys vice president Stephen Jones said on KRLD/105.3 The Fan. “The other option he has other than run is, when he doesn’t give it to Zeke, is to pull up and throw it. So, when you have all those opportunities and options there, it’s more difficult to defend. No question.”

Elliott, however, will be eventually start getting more than 16 carries a game — his two-game average to start 2018. It’s the first time Elliott has had consecutive games with fewer than 20 rushes. The 32 combined rushes in the first two games are his fewest over two games since he rushed 31 combined times at Denver and at Arizona a year ago this month. That includes his career-low nine-rushes for eight yards day against the Broncos.

“We didn’t have the many plays on offense,” Cowboys coach Jason Garrett said of the 50-pay night. “We only had eight real drives in the game, so we didn’t have a lot of snaps. We ran the ball fairly consistently both inside and outside. I do think the quarterback runs are a byproduct of maybe how they’re focusing on and trying to take Zeke Elliott out of it. So Dak being able to run the ball on some of those certainly helps us If you look at the run total altogether, all the different runners and the different ways you run the ball, that’s the way you try to evaluate it.”

But even Garrett acknowledge Elliott needs more touches going forward. “Zeke is a big part of what we’re doing and we need to give him opportunities,” he said.

To Elliott’s credit, he isn’t fazed by the smaller work load … yet. And when Dallas needed a game-icing drive late in the fourth quarter, he was fresh and gained 29 yards, including a game-long, 19-yard run and a six-yard scoring run that put the Cowboys up 20-3 with five minutes, 51 seconds remaining.

“It really brought me back to my rookie year when we had five of those [game-icing drives],” Elliott said. “That’s just the identity of this team, we are going to be physical from the Play 1 to 80. I think it showed in that drive. The Giants’ defense is very good, they’re stacked, but I think we wore them down and it showed in that drive.”

This story was originally published September 17, 2018 at 5:58 PM.