After one of the best games of his career on Sunday, Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott is back in a familiar place: Leading the NFL in rushing.
Elliott has 426 yards on 73 carries, putting him well ahead of the No. 2 rusher, Rams running back Todd Gurley, who has 338 yards on 79 carries.
Sunday’s performance came despite an injury that Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said has Elliott hobbling around.
“He had a little ankle and he’s got a little bursitis he’s working on on his knee, but he’s such a competitor,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan. “He can’t stand not being out there. He’s a warrior. You’ve got to give hats off to him. Like you said, he’s obviously playing with pain, but at the same time, when you dial his number up, you don’t see it when the play starts. So, hats off to him. He’s such a great competitor. As we’ve said from the get-go this year, he’s in the right place in terms of where his head is, where his mind is. He’s obviously this is a season where he’s wanting to show everybody what he’s really about and certainly he’s done that to this point.”
This is Elliott’s third NFL season, and leading the league in rushing is par for the course for him. As a rookie he led the league with 1,631 yards, and in his second season he led the league with an average of 98.3 yards per game, although he didn’t lead the league in total rushing yards because he served a six-game suspension.
Through 29 career games, Elliott is averaging 104.8 rushing yards per game. That would be enough to top Jim Brown’s all-time record of 104.3 yards per game. Elliott’s production is on a historic pace.
