Dallas Cowboys ‘Perfect 10’? Ezekiel Elliott Reveals Plan to Run Over Cincinnati Bengals

Elliott and the Cowboys will now have to do their “converting” without the guidance of Dak Prescott (thumb surgery) for an extended period of time.

FRISCO – The concept of “Establishing the Run” has been such a cliche - and in today’s pass-happy NFL, such a sarcastic meme - that one of the top fantasy football sites uses the phrase as its name.

But old-school though it may be, Ezekiel Elliott remains a true believer.

"I think it's important, period, to establish the run game - to run the football," Elliott said as his 0-1 Dallas Cowboys prepare for a Week 2 visit from the Cincinnati Bengals. "I think we ran the ball efficiently last Sunday. And I'm looking forward to doing it again this week.”

There was a certain efficiency in what Zeke did in the 19-3 season-opening loss to the Tampa Bay Bucs. He registered 10 carries for 52 yards before the flow of the game, the failures on third down (Dallas was but three of 15) and maybe errant play-calling decisions from coach Mike McCarthy and staff curtailed Elliott’s opportunities.

Said All-Pro guard Zack Martin of his "pissed-off'' Cowboys: "We’ve got to convert on our third-and-'manageable.' That’s something we took away from that game. Everyone wants to know why we didn’t run it enough; Well we didn’t convert on third down, so we really didn’t have a lot of opportunities. (We need to) get us into those manageable third-down situations, convert them and keep drives alive.''

Elliott and the Cowboys will now have to do their “converting” without the guidance of Dak Prescott (thumb surgery) for an extended period of time. They believe backup quarterback Cooper Rush can be a big part of the fix so they don't repeat their dubious three-point output - the lowest point total for the Cowboys in a season-opener since 1989, the year future Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Jimmy Johnson rolled into town.

But beyond Rush, Zeke, the two-time NFL rushing champ, seems to be offering up his services, too.

“The efficiency is there,” he said. “We just gotta get to it, get the runs and wear on the defense."

So, is there a magic number, a perfect number, a winning number of carries?

'I don’t know the number of carries, but I think we definitely have to commit to running it,'' Elliott said.

Is that "number of carries'' ... 10?

"Nah," he replied.

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