The holdout saga continues.
Ezekiel Elliott has yet to show up to training camp and it appears that won’t change despite the Dallas Cowboys offering him a contract that would make him the second-highest played running back in the league.
Sources: The most recent offer in negotiations between holdout Ezekiel Elliott and the Cowboys came from the team. Elliott has been offered a contract making him one of the NFL’s 2 highest-paid RB. That would suggest team offering more than LeVeon Bell and less than Todd Gurley.
— Ed Werder (@WerderEdESPN)
August 22, 2019 This whole fiasco has been quite the rollercoaster. Looking back at last season, Jerry Jones, the Cowboys owner, president and general manager, fought tooth and nail for Elliott while the league tried multiple times to suspend him. Elliott was eventually suspended for four games at the end of the season, ruining everyone's fantasy football playoffs.
Elliott then, entering the new year, announced he wouldn’t report to camp without a new deal. After a week of no news, Jones made a joke responding to a question about Elliott being absent from camp saying, “Zeke who?”
That did not go over well with Elliott’s camp, Jones felt that he ‘earned the right’ to joke about the situation.
Then there were rumors that the deal was close to getting done, which leads us right up to now.
It’s honestly like trying to explain middle school drama, it’s ridiculous.
Joe Thomas, the former left tackle for the Cleveland Browns and future Hall of Famer, weighed in on the contract talks.
If I am zeke, and the Cowboys send me an offer anything less or equal to Todd Gurley, it’s going straight to voicemail. They can’t honestly think he would accept anything less than to be the highest paid running back. It’s just an insult to even start anywhere below that number. https://t.co/QEbgXpIvkJ
— Joe Thomas (@joethomas73)
August 22, 2019 He went on to talk about how teams are usually loyal to players that they draft and unafraid to pay them.
Throughout the course of NFL history, if you are the best player at your position (or clearly one of the best) when you re-sign a second contract with the team that drafted you, you usually beat the highest paid current contract at your position by 15 to 20%.
— Joe Thomas (@joethomas73)
August 23, 2019 Elliott would retweet the second Thomas tweet, not hiding the fact that he feels disrespected.
With the Cowboys season opener just 16 days away, and everyone’s fantasy drafts around the corner, it’s time for Dallas mend this issue.
While the Elliott situation seems to be working towards a conclusion, the Melvin Gordon holdout from the Los Angeles Chargers has been radio silence. Who knows what’s going on there...
