3 Patriots Who Were Embarrassingly Bad vs. Cowboys

2. Ezekiel Elliott

So much for an Ezekiel Elliott revenge game, huh?

There were reports ahead of this matchup that Zeke would get a bigger workload against Dallas, setting him up to continue his positive momentum after a nice 80-yard performance in Week 3. However, back in Jerry World, the vet reverted back to a running back who looks over the hill.

Elliott saw just 6 carries on Sunday and did nothing with them, tallying just 16 yards. Remove his 9-yard scamper, and he picked up just 7 yards on his other 5 attempts combined.

This is much more like the Elliott we saw to begin the year, and it’s fair to wonder if his Week 3 outing was a bit of fool’s gold. He’s posted only 29, 13 and 16 rushing yards over his other three games with the team so far, providing the complete opposite of a spark.

It’s getting tougher to make excuses for Elliott at this point. A sluggish first two weeks is understandable since he was out of a job since March, but now we’re a month in and he still looks this bad?

Right now, it appears the fears other teams around the league had about Elliott are proving true. He doesn’t have that next gear and relies on plodding his way to pick up yards. That renders him a goal-line threat, and those opportunities aren’t exactly frequent with how New England’s offense is playing, so he seems destined to keep making a minimal impact at this point.