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ARLINGTON -- It was the kind of confusing, aggravating 20-19 defeat that had the Cowboys owner adopting a "better than last year" refrain afterwards while the head coach refused to talk about the sun.
What?
Maybe this is the crazy stuff that happens when you pin your hopes on rookies in the National Football League. But while late fourth-round pick Dak Prescott was somewhere between adequate and admirable without ever being spectacular in any way -- no turnovers, no sacks, no touchdown passes -- it was the No. 4 overall pick and his head-scratching performance that sounded most of the alarms in the Cowboys' one-point loss to the New York Giants at AT&T Stadium.
After spending most of the summer encased in bubble wrap, carrying the ball just seven times in the preseason but earning rave reviews with those carries in Seattle, Elliott made something less than a splash in his NFL debut with 51 yards on 20 carries. He scored the Cowboys' only touchdown on a nice drive-inside-hop-to-the-outside eight-yard run but otherwise was held almost completely in check by the Giants' defense.
Dallas fans weren't the only ones horrified by his lack of production. You can count millions of fantasy owners who expect him to be among the league's top five rushers right along with the disappointed Cowboys faithful.
"It wasn't a game where we were going to make a lot of big runs,'' Garrett said. "That was what they were going to try to take away from us.''
It can't be that simple, can it?
The Cowboys drafted Elliott with the No. 4 pick because he's viewed as an elite all-around back, and they place him behind the game's best offensive line -- and all a defense has to do is focus on that aspect of the game and the whole thing gets shut down?
You kept expecting holes to be made available, and it just did not happen. This is a line that paved the way for DeMarco Murray to break Emmitt Smith's team record and rush for more than 1,800 yards in 2015. It's a line that enabled Darren McFadden to rank fourth in the league in rushing despite not starting until Week 6.
With all the uncertainty around this Cowboys team on defense and in having to ride with a rookie quarterback, the running game with Elliott and this powerful young line was supposed to be the constant. Instead, it was ultimately the Cowboys' downfall because it never became a weapon they could rely upon to move the chains.
"Their offensive line is second to none in the league,'' Giants linebacker Jonathan Casillas said. "We knew what they was going to do. I wouldn't say we stopped it, but we contained it to a certain amount. And we made the plays to end the game and win the game.''
The Cowboys actually got better production during Alfred Morris' brief time on the field (seven carries, 35 yards), but that's hardly consolation moving forward. You can't draft Elliott with the No. 4 pick, passing on the best defenders the draft had to offer in hopes that Elliott would serve as Murray 2.0, and then abandon that plan after one game for a share-the-load situation with Morris.
"They won a lot at the point of attack,'' Elliott said. "They were big on the inside. We've got to go back to the drawing board and get ready for next week.''
The Cowboys won't want a rookie quarterback throwing 45 passes a game. Heck, they don't want Tony Romo throwing 40 passes a game. But the hopes of Prescott developing as a good game manager while not being asked to do too much go out the window if the Cowboys are going to get 2.6 yards per carry from Elliott.
There's no question that the Giants spent a lot of money to shore up a bad defense this offseason. It's an approach the Cowboys declined to take. And it works a lot less often than you might think, given how we tend to declare teams "free agency winners."
But Giants tackle Damon Harrison, picked up as a free agent from the Jets, looked like he was everywhere, disrupting plays more than making tackles although he had five of those. And Elliott just never got on any kind of a roll at all, held to a long run of five yards in 15 first-half tries. After back-to-back gains of eight on the club's only touchdown drive following a New York turnover, Elliott gained just two yards on three carries the rest of the way.
"We all can get better,'' Elliott said. "We're all going to get better this season.''
That's what rookies do. But a line that's constantly hailed as the game's finest has to provide Elliott with far better opportunities for Jones' "better than last year'' claim to mean much.
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