Jerry Jones was fined for having Zeke’s back. Is he disappointed in RB for holdout?
In light of running back Ezekiel Elliott’s now official holdout of training camp in a contract dispute, owner Jerry Jones was reminded of his support of the two-time rushing champ during his battle with the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell over his six-game suspension in 2017.
Jones challenged Goodell’s job, threatened to sue other NFL owners and subsequently was fined $2 million for his troubles.
None of it was lost on Jones as he deftly balanced any disappointment in Elliott’s holdout.
“All of that comes to mind. It does come to mind,” Jones said following the team’s annual press conference to open training camp on Friday. “My time with Zeke has been based on just that, supporting him. And I do support him. I think he has a fabulous future here. So maybe I should be sure and say that.
“As far as what we are working through here, I think the best way to say it is, sometimes we all get stopped on fourth and 1. It just happens to the best. We just got to keep going here. Line up and go again.”
A nonplussed Jones said the Elliott situation is not an issue for him because it’s the nature of the game now with a number of players holding out across the league.
“You got holdouts all over the league,” Jones said. “Not having all things tied up in the rest of the world has been the way it has been since I have been old enough to understand. This doesn’t flare me. It shouldn’t our fans. There are issues. But candidly I probably have a higher tolerance to this than anybody. Because my stuff is never totally addressed when you look at everything. There is always an area, there are dangling participles out there.”
Jones also refused to compare Elliott’s holdout to Hall of Fame running back Emmitt Smith, who missed two regular games in 1993. It was an issue for the players and the fans, causing a huge distraction following two losses to start the season before the Cowboys signed him to a contract and the team went on to win back-to-back Super Bowl titles.
He said this is a different situation and a different time.
“The thing is that Emmitt was out of contract. Out of contract,” Jones said. “We needed to re-sign him and at that particular time, he had no place to go. So you had that type deal. We’ve got more remedies, I got to look at a big book back here to figure out all of the different kinds of remedies for where you are here. Where you are today is daylight and dark from where you were then because you’ve had a lot of precedence, you’ve had a lot of experience with it. We know where it is, different ballgame, and you have to just by the nature of it, look for the very best.”
“We’ll get to work on stuff out here that we need to work on just in case we didn’t have him. We need to be working on that. The quarterback needs to work without him.”
Of course, the truth is that Smith had one more year left on his contract. He was not a free agent in 1993.
The end result was him becoming the highest-paid running in the NFL at the time with a four-year, $13-million extension.
Will Elliott’s holdout end similarly?
This story was originally published July 26, 2019 at 4:44 PM.