Rowdy
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- Mar 18, 2019
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The Cowboys won three Super Bowls with Emmitt Smith as their top running back and Smith was the leading rusher in the NFL in each of those seasons.
One might assume that would work in Ezekiel Elliott‘s favor when it comes to hammering out a new deal with the team. Elliott has led the NFL in rushing two of the last three years and the team went to the postseason each year.
They didn’t win the Super Bowl, however, and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pointed out in an interview with CBS DFW that having the rushing champ isn’t a prerequisite for winning the big one.
“The point there is, you don’t have to have a rushing champion to win a Super Bowl . . . Emmitt was the first one to do it . . . . That’s one of the dilemmas at running back is that the league knows that you can win Super Bowls and not have the Emmitt Smith back there or not have Zeke back there,” Jones said. “You’ve gotta do all of the things along with having Zeke that allow you to have other players so that you can win the Super Bowl. That’s what we’re going through.”
The Cowboys have a couple of other players to pay right now and neither quarterback Dak Prescott nor wide receiver Amari Cooper has a team option on their contract for the 2020 season. That may wind up working against ending a holdout that’s not showing any signs of slowing down.