Ezekiel Elliott to Make up for Dallas Cowboys’ Suspensions

The Dallas Cowboys will be without DE’s Randy Gregory and Demarcus Lawrence for the first four games due to suspension. MLB Rolando McClain has his own 10-game suspension this season. That’s a starting MLB and two starting DE that you know will miss time before injuries.

And with today’s 53-man rosters in the NFL, that leaves less than ideal depth on defense in 2016. And on top of that,  as S Barry Church says, it’s “three key, key slices” of the unit missing time.

According to Pro Football Talk, the Cowboys are talking to veteran linebacker Justin Durant about a possible return to the team to help them cover for him. But there are two more starters to replace and the team is unlikely to find them on the street before the season.

He can’t afford not to but Church thinks everything can still work out in 2016. He has bought into Jerry Jones’ belief in 2016 first-round pick Ezekiel Elliott. Jones believes the RB will keep the offense on the field long enough to make things work like DeMarco Murray did in 2014.

Church told Sirius XM NFL Radio, “He’s definitely a three-tool player that can just play on every single down,” “And it helps out the defense a lot. It takes up our play downs by a lot. That also happened in 2014 when we had DeMarco Murray.

“He was punishing defenses and we were three-and-out here, three-and-out there and we were fresh in the fourth quarter. That’s how we won all of our games, by getting takeaways in the fourth quarter, but that was because we were fresh.

“Hopefully, we can get back to that same formula, where we’re just grounding and pounding people and then we’re just coming in there and cleaning things up. So we’ll see what happens, but he has all the talent in the world.”

Even with the suspensions, the defense from 2014 isn’t as good as this one so this could work!