Are the Cowboys Running Backs More Than Meets the Eye? Not Likely.

The Dallas Cowboys open the 2024 NFL season in just a few weeks. For a season already packed with puzzling questions, one of the most intriguing questions fans are asking involves the less-than-impressive stable of running backs the team has decided to trot out for the first game in Cleveland on Sept. 8.

The evolution of how the Cowboys have handled the RB position in recent years has been an interesting one. In 2019, the Cowboys signed Ezekiel Elliott to a six-year deal worth $90 million, yet during the free agency period this year, Dallas let last year’s leading rusher Tony Pollard defect to the Tennessee Titans for just $7 million a year.

The ‘Boys will go into this new season having not drafted a running back and investing less in the position than they have in years. After a year away, Elliott is back as the highest paid back on the team, although that status is misleading. Elliott will make a mere $2 million this year, which is tied for 37th in NFL running back salaries. Yes, you read that correctly. This budget move came during an offseason when 10 different running backs signed deals worth over $5 million per year. That’s almost a third of NFL teams that decided it was worthwhile to invest in the RB position the same year the Cowboys decided it wasn’t.

The Cowboys will roll with a trio of backs expected to include Elliott and veteran backup Rico Dowdle. The third back named to the team is likely to be little used journeyman Royce Freeman. There are other backs in camp who could potentially fill that third role or at least be candidates for the practice squad in Deuce Vaughn, Malik Davis, Nathaniel Peat and Snoop Conner.

The collection of running backs in training camp right now suggests the Cowboys are hoping for a sort of “Devastator effect,” like you would see from Transformers cartoons of the 1980s.

You may or may not remember, but Devastator was a beast of a Decepticon that combined six different Constructicons to form an unstoppable force. All that evil teamwork often proved to be unstoppable by even the good guy Autobots.


But although the Dallas Cowboys often seem to be portraying a soap opera, this team is certainly not a cartoon. The patchwork approach to the running back position is reality, and the Cowboys are clearly hoping that the sum of the parts, somehow, can be that unstoppable force. Yet, there’s little reason to think any of the runners have much to offer on their own.

Simply put, the Cowboys treatment of this season’s running back position is bizarre. Maybe even too bizarre for a Transformers plot.

Let’s review; they brought back a guy they were more than willing to let walk away a couple of years ago in Elliott, who averaged only 3.5 yards per attempt last year in New England as he continued to decline. Dowdle is going into his fifth season in the NFL and has only 96 carries in his entire career.

Freeman, a free agent pick up this year, has been a decent NFL backup, but his best years were in 2018 and 2019 in Denver. Since then, in the last four seasons with Denver, Carolina, Houston and the LA Rams he’s averaged about four carries for 16 yards a game.

Deuce Vaughn played in 7 games as a rookie last year and averaged 1.7 YPA on his 23 carries. Nathaniel Peat is an undrafted free agent who was Missouri’s third-leading rusher last year and has yet to take a snap in the NFL, and Snoop Conner is going into his third year in the league and with but 12 career carries.

When a Devastator comes together, it is done so with elements much more dangerous and formidable than these.

The last time the Cowboys failed to have a running back break the 700-yard threshold was 2012 when DeMarco Murray led the way with 663 yards. That team finished a mediocre 8–8.

In only three seasons in franchise history has the team not had a back amass at least 600 yards. In 1989, Paul Palmer led the Cowboys with 446 yards as they finished 1–15, the worst record in the league. In 1976, Doug Dennison led the way with 542 as they got to 11–3, and in the Cowboys' first year of existence in 1960 it was L.G. Dupree who led the team with an insane 362 yards as they finished 0–11–1.

History isn’t kind to teams that lack a lead back who could move the football. Unless you have Roger Staubach at QB, that is.

Did the Cowboys misread the market? How could they have been so off at this position when several other teams, including their archrival, the Philadelphia Eagles, were more than willing to invest big?

This current RB scenario brings to mind the Cowboys’ failed 2018 experiment at the wide receiver position. Team owner and general manager Jerry Jones cut star receiver Dez Bryant and rolled into the year without a true No. 1 wideout, opting for an assortment of guys he and his staff hoped would get the job done collectively. The end result shouldn’t have come as a surprise to any of us, but apparently it did to the Cowboys. That plan simply did not work. At all.

Allen Hurns, Cole Beasley, Deonte Thompson, rookie Michael Gallup, Tavon Austin and Terrence Williams combined to lead the Cowboys to a rough 3–4 start for the year going into their bye week. Fortunately for fans and for the team, the club recognized its mistake and traded a first-round pick to the then Oakland Raiders in exchange for Pro Bowl receiver Amari Cooper.

Cooper played the final nine games of the season for Dallas and finished third on the team in receptions and first in yards and touchdown receptions. The Cowboys won 7 of their last 9 games to reach the playoffs. But here we are again, with a premium skill position greatly lacking going into a season when there will be two new starters on the offensive line. This is not a Devastator blueprint.


Welcome to your 2024 Dallas Cowboys running backs! In a season in which so much seems to be on the line, including how the entire coaching staff and the star QB currently have but one year left on their contracts, it’s an odd decision to not put the best weapons possible on the field.

For now, the Cowboys are going into this season with nothing but ifs at running back, not dominant killer robots.

The Cowboys might be successful if Elliott can turn back the clock on Father Time to become a short yardage beast, or if Rico Dowdle magically realizes the potential we’ve been told he has for the past four seasons and if Royce Freeman does something he hasn’t done since 2019. Maybe then there's hope that we do live in a cartoon and Devastator has indeed taken over.