Veteran Values: Ezekiel Elliott is Back, And Ready To Score A Lot of TDs
Ezekiel Elliott was once a player we all were clamoring for in the early first round, and he’s become the poster boy for annoying veteran you hate to see soaking up opportunities for a potentially exciting, younger RB. We once saw him in Dallas standing in the way of Tony Pollard, and then Pollard got the gig. A year later, Pollard was allowed to leave, and Dallas has reunited with Zeke, who now gets to impede Rico Dowdle. Will this work? I think it’ll work out better than ADP indicates the fantasy community does.
The popular take will be that Zeke’s washed, and Dowdle is the RB to draft from this backfield. Right now, Elliott is at No. 124 overall (RB40), 23 spots ahead of Dowdle (RB48). As we approach Draft Day, I expect buzz to build for Dowdle because youth is more exciting than older vets on the downside of their career. But while Zeke’s been in our life seemingly forever, he’s got a little juice left. He’s entering his age-29 season, so he has not reached the dreaded age cliff that begins with a three. He never had a run for more than 20 yards in 2023, but he did have six plays of 15 yards or more, with five of them coming through the air, a critical component of my optimism for him.
Even though he’s older than Dowdle, and has less burst at this point in his career, Elliott served as a valuable asset for a New England offense that depended heavily on the run game, and he proved capable when the Patriots didn’t have Rhamondre Stevenson available. Elliott soaked up double-digit attempts in each of the last six games of the year, and seven of the final eight, and he also drew 5+ targets seven times. Over at PFF, Elliott posted similar grades to Dowdle, ranking three spots ahead of him by their metrics. Elliott had a clear edge as a receiver, and they were basically even as runners and pass blockers; given Elliott’s history with the team, and Jerry Jones, it’s hard to envision Dallas not utilizing him as the primary back unless he just completely falls off athletically.
While the receiving is nice, and he showed last year he can still produce with a bunch of volume, the real reason he was brought back is very clear. He is an effective TD scorer, whereas Tony Pollard, who was vastly superior last year to Elliott in almost every phase of the position, was shockingly bad. Dallas was the highest-scoring offense in the NFL in 2023, and ran the football 30 times from inside the five-yard line, resulting in just seven touchdowns (only three from Pollard). To put that in context, Dallas rushed the fifth-most times in the NFL from that distance, and every other team with at least 30 attempts from that range had at least 15 touchdowns in those runs.
Zeke had posted back-to-back 12-TD seasons before signing with New England, and last year scored twice on five such attempts from the five or closer. Dowdle scored twice on four attempts, so that stat is a draw, with the likely advantage going toward the proven commodity once again. So in total, with Elliott you’re getting a player with a long history of scoring TDs re-joining the highest-scoring offense from last season, and one that ran the ball in close the fifth-most of all the teams in the league. And while chunk plays are few and far between lately for Zeke, he was tied for 11th among RBs last year in receptions per game (3). The narrative is that he’s a washed up player for fantasy managers to discard, but the truth is that he’ll be valuable depth if his ADP holds, and managers will be happy they can turn to him when the injury bug starts biting.