Ezekiel Elliott limited by nagging knee injury in Dallas Cowboys’ loss to Broncos
Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott left Sunday’s game against the Denver Broncos late in the first quarter with an apparent knee injury.
Elliott spent much of the second quarter on the bench with a heating pad wrapped around his right knee.
The knee, he said, has been bothering him for a couple of weeks. A player landed on it, aggravating the injury, early in Sunday’s 30-16 loss to the Broncos (5-4).
“Yeah, it helped, just to keep it warm,” said Elliott, who finished with 51 yards on 10 carries. “That’s the biggest thing, keeping it warm.”
Tony Pollard saw all of the action on the Cowboys’ first possession in the second quarter, which ended in a punt.
The Broncos led 16-0 at halftime after scoring touchdowns on two 80-yard drives. They missed one of their extra-point attempts.
Elliott returned for the first time in the second quarter with less than three minutes left in the half and caught a pass for a 21-yard gain. But he limped back to the sideline after the play and returned to the bench and heating pad for the rest of the half.
Elliott had 27 yards on six carries and two catches for 21 yards at the half. Pollard had 11 yards on four carries.
Elliott returned in limited action in the second half and was still on the field, along with Dak Prescott, for two touchdown drives in the final five minutes.
He had three catches for 25 yards. He also converted a 2-point conversion run on the Cowboys’ first score of the game with just over four minutes remaining.
The Broncos snapped the Cowboys’ (6-2) six-game win streak.
“I think we came out and didn’t play very well, didn’t execute,” Elliott said. “We felt ready, we felt prepared going into this game, but at the end of the day, they were more physical than us and we didn’t execute good enough.”
Any good reason for the team seemingly coming out flat?
“I don’t know if I have an explanation. We just came out and didn’t execute very well,” he said. “I think we ran the ball all right today. Altogether, offensively, we need to do better. We have to protect the quarterback better, be more physical.”
Even when the Cowboys seemed to be changing the momentum with a blocked punt in the third quarter, down 16-0, it wasn’t Dallas’ day. Thanks to an odd NFL rule on a blocked punt, the Broncos were awarded an automatic first down when they recovered the ball after the Cowboys touched it past the line of scrimmage.
“That sucked that we didn’t get the ball right there. But us together, you can’t be like, ‘we can’t catch a break,’” Elliott said. “We have to play the cards we are dealt and not worry about things we can’t control. Worry more about how we play and how we execute.”
Were the Cowboys going through the motions thinking the six-game win streak magic would eventually come?
“No, I don’t think we came out thinking we already had the game in the bag,” he said. “We just didn’t play good football. We did not play well. And that’s simple. We have to get back to work, learn from this loss and pick it up next week.”
This story was originally published November 7, 2021 at 12:55 PM.
