Based on the all the talking Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones did about running back Ezekiel Elliott and his potential return in the lead up to the 2024 NFL Draft before it actually happened this week post-draft, that begs a simple question: was Elliott’s return always going to happen?
Or, was his return always preferred over drafting a rookie at the running back position, something the Cowboys did not do.
“You’ve got to look at the landscape of the position,” Cowboys vice president of player personnel Will McClay said Wednesday, per LoneStarLive.com when talking about comparing a veteran addition at the position versus that of a rookie. “You know what’s playing in the league and you’re grading those guys against the [other] guys in the league, and then you’re projecting on the college side. So you look at what’s available and then you make your decisions based on that.”
On Saturday after the draft concluded, Dallas COO and executive vice president Stephen Jones said the value didn’t line up for the team to go running back in the third round and by the time the team was on the clock again 174th overall in the fifth round, a number of running backs they would have been interested in were off the board.
“You know I think a lot of times there’s always a question mark of, ‘Would you really, really, really stick to your board?'” Stephen Jones said Saturday. “It just felt like every time the situation was there for us to make a pick and do the right thing, it wasn’t a running back. We had running backs we’d be thinking, ‘Ok, our pick is coming in 10 picks, eight picks, five picks away,’ and then there would be a run. We obviously had a group of running backs there in that space of 75 or 85 players on the board [in the fourth and fifth rounds], and we had a handful of backs that we would’ve considered, but it just didn’t work out. At the end of the day, you stay true to what you’re about. … We’ll have opportunities throughout [the offseason] to address this running back situation, and we fell like we’ll get it done. It makes a running back’s job a lot easier when the guys up front are doing their job. I think we really helped that situation today in terms of the foundation of our offensive line group. We feel like we can address that [running back] position as we go.”
The lack of a fourth-round pick, after they traded it to the San Francisco 49ers…
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