The Dallas Cowboys are reuniting with Ezekiel Elliott in a move made to strengthen their backfield before the 2024 NFL season. Dallas has Super Bowl aspirations and hopes to end a 28-year drought without a championship next season with Elliott back in the fold following an unhappy season with the New England Patriots.
Before re-signing the former first-round pick, the Cowboys made it clear how much they still admired Elliott, who rushed for a career-low 642 yards and three touchdowns in 2023. In order to fit him back in to head coach Mike McCarthy‘s running back rotation, team owner Jerry Jones signed off on an unusual arrangement…that he originally agreed to take on when releasing Elliott in 2023.
Ezekiel Elliott and “dead money”
Let’s rewind to September 2019, when Elliott ended a training camp holdout by signing a six-year, $90 million contract extension with the Cowboys. That contract was later restructured in 2021 to create salary cap space, and Dallas eventually released Elliott in 2023 after he averaged just 3.8 yards per carry — incurring a $6 million “dead money” charge by doing so.
In the NFL, a dead money charge appears under the salary cap when a team trades or releases a player who did not receive his full signing bonus prior to his departure. That was the case for Elliott, whose 2019 extension was supposed to keep him under contract until 2026 — and it means Elliott will be on the Cowboys’ roster in 2024 even as the team still has to work around that $6 million in dead money counting against the cap.
Elliott’s new one-year deal with the Cowboys is worth up to $3 million, and he will compete for reps with Rico Dowdle and Royce Freeman after 2023 leading rusher Tony Pollard joined the Tennessee Titans in free agency. Elliott, the fourth overall selection in the 2016 NFL Draft, instantly becomes the splash signing in what has been a quiet offseason for Dallas — but even on a one-year deal, the former Ohio State star does not necessarily come risk-free.
Elliott rushed for more than 8,000 yards during his first stint in Dallas, but the two-time rushing champ has rushed for 1,000 yards only once since 2020 and has averaged more than four yards per carry once in the past four seasons. It remains to be seen if the “running back by committee” approach works out in McCarthy‘s offense — or if the dead money charge continues to hurt America’s Team.