ARLINGTON (105.3 The Fan) - The Dallas Cowboys failed on a late-game two-point conversion that would've sent this Thursday night preseason finale against the visiting Bucs to overtime ... and nobody here inside AT&T Stadium wept.
Instead, the page was turned to more important matters than Tampa Bay 17, Dallas 15. Like, for instance, the contract negotiations with Ezekiel Elliott, and the cutdown to 53, and Zeke, and the silly danger of four preseason games, and Zeke, and the health of a couple of kids who got dinged up ... and Zeke.
"We need Zeke,'' said Cowboys owner Jerry Jones when I asked him for an update on the Elliott holdout, offering him a chance to bite on the queer involvement of Zeke camp spokesmodel Marshall Faulk. "We'll use him when we get him. It'll be that much better for the Cowboys .. But if we don't have him, we're going to go out there and play winning football.'
That's the position Cowboys management must take, at least until it bends a little bit more from what we reported at the start of the week to be a new offer that is "Gurley-like.'' Or until it doesn't bend, confident that with the first three games on the schedule being against the have-not Giants, Redskins and Dolphins, that maybe success can be had without this team's MVP.
I'm glad we can put behind us, by the way, any debate about how Dallas has created a new proposal for Elliott that puts in the dust the $13 mil APY being paid Le'Veon Bell while almost catching up with Gurley's $14 mil APY. We stand by our story, of course ... and are amused that it took three days for some of our media detractors to catch up.
And suddenly, four days late, our media detractors have crawfished their way to "standing by our story,'' too.
Win without Zeke? The mood in this locker room is that it simply must be done. I have a grand mental snapshot of Dallas' trio of leaders, Dak Prescott, Jason Witten and Sean Lee, gathering in corner of the locker room late into the night, sharing guffaws. Not laughing about Zeke's absence of course; the only thing funny about that is Faulk's attempt to barnacle his way onto Elliott's fame in order to advance his own career. No, their laughter is about the mood of this football team, the confidence of this football team, the belief that it can endure.
"Everybody knows who's not here,'' said receiver Michael Gallup. But you still have to keep playing. We're hoping to get (Zeke) back but you know that's not in our control. We can control what we can control.''
Review young Gallup's words. They echo coach Jason Garrett's lifelong mantra ("I only concern myself with things that are within my control'') and they otherwise ooze the same confidence exhibited by the owner.
"We've got a chance to have a really good football team,'' said Jones, and really, amid all the fuss and the fighting, not even the Ezekiel Elliott camp can really argue about that.
