The Dallas Cowboys' season is close to over, and there truly is one man to blame. It's not head coach Jason Garrett, slumping quarterback Dak Prescott, or injured linebacker Sean Lee, but the suspended star halfback Ezekiel Elliot. Early in the preseason, it became obvious that Elliot was going to receive some form of discipline from commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL for his involvement in a domestic violence incident from the winter of 2016, and before the season, Goodell and the league slapped a six game suspension on the Pro Football Writers' 2016 Rookie of the Year. Frankly, it was widely thought of as a questionable punishment considering the situation, and that the incident took place weeks before Elliot was even drafted by an NFL team. Elliot gathered a legal team and quickly decided to appeal the suspension like so many in professional sports have done in the recent years. This, however is where Elliot makes his first of a fatal series of mistakes. While others like Josh Gordon and Tom Brady have taken their suspensions to court in an attempt to shorten them, Elliot and his team made no effort to shorten the suspension, but instead focused on abolishing the ban completely. To completely rid such a substantial punishment is clearly unrealistic, so the league and the court already began to take Elliot's efforts less seriously, because it seemed like there was little preparation, probably an accurate assumption based on the plan of attack chosen by Elliot's legal team. While the court hearings continued, Elliot was able to play, helping his team to a 2-1 record to start the year before dropping two straight to move to 2-3. During the Cowboys' BYE week, the court finally ruled in favor of the league and Elliot was set to begin his suspension starting in week 7, lasting until week 12, and setting Elliot up for a week 13 return in the midst of the playoff push. The NFL and NFL players association went back and forth until another hearing was set for October 30, which meant that Elliot was good to go for week 7 against San Francisco. The ban was again held up, but the NFLPA fired back, and a new hearing was set, allowing Elliot to take part in a week 8 affair with the Redskins. The league then sensed, like all of the fans, that this was getting ridiculous, and that a suspension that was set for weeks one to six, has still not taken form in week 9. They requested that Elliot be suspended during the appeal, and then banned for the final quantity of games after the ruling was decided upon. This was quickly shot down by the NFLPA, and they took the case to a higher court and requested emergency motion. The motion was granted, and for the fourth time, Elliot was un-suspended, this time ready to play in the week 9 bout with Kansas City. After the win at home against the Chiefs, The NFLPA took the case to a second-circuit court and for the fifth time, they were shot down. At this point, no plausible options remained for Elliot, whose lawsuit is still taking place. The suspension, however seemed to be in tact for good. Sure enough, on November 15, Elliot dropped his appeal, and he would serve his suspension from week 10 to week 15, missing games against the Falcons, Eagles, Chargers, Redskins, Giants, and Raiders. The Cowboys, as we know dropped the first three of those games and are now falling behind in the division as they struggle to move the ball without Elliot. This is where you begin to question the thought process of Elliot. He passed up on the chance to miss the first 6 games, but then return to play the other 10. Then he passed up on 4 separate chances to miss 6 games in the middle of the season, still with returns early enough to contribute to the playoff race. Instead, he settled to play 9 games, serve his six game ban during the time when the playoff picture is painted, and then return for two potentially meaningless games to end the season. Elliot will essentially miss perhaps the 6 most crucial games of the Cowboys' season, not to mention the fact that he could have contributed to earlier losses because the team did not know whether to prepare for a game with him or without him and likely ended up spending valuable practice time working on a gameplan that they would never use. Dallas' season is now in jeopardy and their best player has to watch from home, because he would have rather played in week 7 against the Niners, and its making him look like the laughingstock of the league.
