s per game; can he run his way to league MVP? Ezekiel Elliott was absolutely fantastic on Sunday in the Dallas Cowboys 26-24 win over the Detroit Lions. I haven’t seen a Cowboys team ride a guy to victory since Emmitt Smith helped them win the division in the season finale against the New York Giants back in 1993. Most of have heard of that story Dallas Cowboys Womens Hoodie , if you didn’t watch it yourselves, where Smith would battle through a shoulder injury to help the Cowboys pull out a 16-13 overtime win. The mothership recently did a documentary on it.Smith carried the ball 32 times for 168 yards and caught the ball 10 times for another 61 yards, totaling 229 scrimmage yards. The victory gave the Cowboys the no. 1 seed in the NFC, helping them pave the way for the second of two-straight Super Bowl Championships. It was a performance for the ages.Ezekiel Elliott was used in a similar capacity on SundayJason Garrett would channel his ‘90s Cowboys team and leverage heavily on his star running back on Sunday. Zeke finished the game with a career-high 240 scrimmage yards. 152 of those were on the ground, while he added 88 more as a receiver. It was an all-around exceptional game by Zeke.Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty ImagesThere is a lot to love about what we saw from Elliott on Sunday. For starters, this kid is extremely durable. There were a handful of times where it appeared Zeke came up gimpy and headed over to the sideline. Rod Smith would come in for a play or two, but then Zeke was back out there ready to make another amazing play. When you look around the NFL and see running backs all over the league ailing right now, it makes you appreciate Elliott’s durability.Leonard Fournette (hamstring), Dalvin Cook (hamstring), Devonta Freeman (knee), Joe Mixon (knee), and LeSean McCoy (ribs) have all missed time this season due to injury and we’re just a quarter of the way through the season. Zeke hasn’t missed a single game in his NFL career due to injury.While his toughness provides a welcoming availability that we all can enjoy on Sundays, it’s what Elliott actually does on the field that has us impressed. Zeke is a do-it-all running back. He can get you the dirty yards and he can be electrifying in space. He has the patience to wait for his blocks, and he has the burst to exploit them. He can grind out rushing yards all day, but he can also be a weapon as a receiver as well. Zeke’s 38-yard touchdown reception against the Lions on Sunday marks the third-straight season he’s taken a big screen play to the house. And let’s not forget that amazing over the shoulder catch he had on that wheel route late in the fourth quarter.Zeke’s receiving skills shined bright against DetroitWhile Elliott has done some damage as a receiver, it was the first time in his career that damage was done with his hands and not his legs.This third quarter run by Zeke illustrates how he’s so good at so many different things.First, he has the awareness to stutter-step to avoid being tackled in the backfield. Then, he finds his running lane and explodes through the hole. He then uses his track-and-field star skills to hurdle a defender and he’s off to the races for a big chuck of a yards. Then, my favorite part, he uses his power to make sure it takes the defensive back a good seven yards to bring him down. As Garrett would say, he’s just a really good football player.Zeke is currently leading the league in rushing and to be honest, it’s not even close.Elliott has been one of the great running backs since the first moment that he came into the league. After Sunday’s performance, Zeke’s already eclipsed the 3,000 yards rushing mark. Only one player has reached it faster and it’s that Hall of Fame running back who broke the NFL single-season rushing record his second year in the league... maybe you’ve heard of him?While Elliott is off to a fast start career-wise, he’s just now reaching the point in the season where he starts to really take off. For example:In his first two games of the year (2016, 2017, and 2018) Womens Customized Dallas Cowboys Jerseys , he’s averaged 65 yards per game.In his next two games (2016, 2017, and 2018), he’s averaged 120 yards per game.In the two games following (2016 and 2017), he’s averaged 138 yards per game.I don’t know if it’s his lack of reps in the preseason to preserve his health or if it’s the fact that the Cowboys have always had a couple new offensive line starters in each of Zeke’s years in the league, but he always starts slow only to turn it up about this time of the season. Ezekiel Elliott is just getting warmed up.With Elliott’s 152-yard rushing performance on Sunday, he now has an average of 104.8 yards per game in his NFL career. That moves him ahead of Jim Brown for the all-time lead.Officially, Zeke doesn’t qualify to be on this list until he hits 750 rushing attempts. He only has 637 career attempts right now, but he should make it official somewhere near the midpoint of the season as long as he doesn’t dip below an average of 104 yards during those next few games.Let’s continue to feed ZekeThe Cowboys will continue to put the ball in the hands of their best offensive playmaker. When the ground game is flowing, the game moves a lot slower for Dak Prescott. When the defense is loading the box, the secondary becomes a lot less congested for the receivers. Good things happen when Zeke’s on a roll.If the Cowboys keep winning football games and Zeke continues to play like he has so far, you could be looking at your next league MVP. Elliott finished fourth in voting in 2016 after a great rookie season where he led the league in rushing with 1,631 yards. His greatness was overshadowed a bit by his fellow rookie teammate Dak Prescott who had a phenomenal season as well. Some weren’t sure if it was Dak or Zeke carrying this team to a 13-3 record, but there shouldn’t be much mystery about who the leader of this offense is now. All of this not withstanding, but Zeke’s production was also downplayed due to the Cowboys strong offensive line. Ron Leary and Doug Free have since parted and Travis Frederick has yet to play a snap this year. The Cowboys have three new pieces to their offensive line since Zeke’s rookie season, yet Elliott appears to not be suffering any ill effects.People can try to make cases against him all they want, but he’s the real deal.How the Cowboys can beat the Giants on Sunday night Time for the Dallas Cowboys to move on and set things right (we certainly hope). After that disappointing season-opening loss, the issue at hand is just what the Cowboys need to do in order to get a very important win over the New York Giants. After that pile of something that landed on the field in Charlotte, there are lots of areas for improvement. Here are some game-plans and other strategies for the Giants game.Tom Ryle: In order to win against the Giants, I believe they have to come up with a plan to pass beyond or around the box when they stack it up to stop Ezekiel Elliott. It doesn’t matter exactly how they do - it can be short or long, out to the edges or across the middle. The important thing is that they have to show they can still move the ball through the air, which is another way of saying they need to establish that Dak Prescott can beat them with his arm. This should include putting Zeke into the pass pattern at times, so he can still be a threat even when they are not handing him the ball. They also need to use some RPO’s and read-options, which would add the threat of Dak keeping it himself and going to the sidelines on a run if the G-men crash the line to stuff Elliott. If they don’t show a way to get the offense going besides just handing the ball to Elliott, New York is just going to sit on him all day, like the Panthers did.David Howman: I think the NYG defense will give us fits early on. James Bettcher is one of the best defensive minds in the game right now and he’ll use a ton of different fronts to confuse our offensive line and Dak, but mostly to mask weakness because the defense just lacks talent at too many places. The Cowboys need to go sideline-to-sideline early to stretch this defense and circumvent their blitz packages. That means screens www.thecowboysfootballauthentic.com , quick slants, zone stretch runs, some pitches for Zeke, and preferably more option stuff for Dak. Once that happens, more deep passes are going to open up wide, as well as big run opportunities for Zeke.Michael Strawn: The offensive line needs to improve - dramatically. Tyron Smith did his best Chaz Green imitation through much of the Carolina game, Connor Williams looked overmatched at times and La’el Collins faded badly as the game wore on. When you look at the tight ends, wide receivers and much of the secondary, you see very little pedigree; it’s almost all mid-round draft picks, low-level free agents and scrub pickups. But the offensive line is where the team has invested top draft picks and second contracts. The offensive line is supposed to be the identity of this team. If the offensive line can’t play better this team has no chance of winning.One Cool Customer: In the ground game, Football Outsiders define ‘success’ as gaining 40% of the necessary yardage on first down, 60% on second down and 100% on third and fourth downs). Ezekiel Elliott has had spectacular success rates in his two seasons with the Cowboys, ranking No. 2 in the league in both years with a 57% success rate in each year.But after Week 1, 2018, he’s rated 34th with a success rate of just 27% (per Football Outsiders), which means only four of his 15 runs were successful. More disturbingly, only two of his 8 runs on 1st-and-10 generated more than four yards.A key part of the Cowboys’ offensive gameplan is getting into manageable second and third down situations, and that didn’t work at all on Sunday. There’s been a lot of discussion about third-down performance during and after the game against the Panthers. But next Sunday against the Giants, keep an eye on first downs; what happens on first down will ultimately determine what happens on third down.Dave Halprin: Dak Prescott has to trust his line and he has to trust his arm. Too often in the Panthers game he felt pressure when it really wasn’t there, or he decided to move out of the pocket when staying put, or just gently sliding to one side or the other, would have done the trick. He needs to settle down in the passing game, get quickly through his progressions instead of locking in on players, and then get the ball out. He’s holding the ball too long on a lot of plays and not trusting what he sees. The Cowboys need to feed him some early slant patterns to Cole Beasley and some RPO’s that are very quick-hitters to get him going. They also need to force him to take a shot or two downfield to open things up. Even if overthrows the pattern on purpose or throws it out of bounds becasue the player is covered, they need to show they will at least attempt it. If they can get Dak working, then the run game will eventually open for Ezekiel Elliott.