ZEKE IS BACK WITH THE DALLAS COWBOYS

Ezekiel Elliott is reuniting with the Dallas Cowboys, and no, this reunion is not like Romy and Michele's High School Reunion. While the Cowboys are not exactly breaking the bank to reunite with Elliott, this is a good move for everyone involved, as the Cowboys need reliable running backs, and Zeke was looking for a new home.

Elliott is at the stage of his career where he is skiing down the backside of Career Mountain. However, he accumulated nearly 1,000 all-purpose yards last season while playing for the New England Patriots, an offense that ranked dead last in the NFL. If you will, their 12.3 points per game was historically bad. The Patriots posted the worst offensive performance from a points perspective since the 1977 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who went 2-12 in their second season as an NFL franchise and scored just 7.4 points per game.

As we all know by now, the NFL running back market is experiencing a unique phase where the value of running backs is at an all-time low. This has led to running backs signing deals that seem astonishingly low. However, in the case of Ezekiel Elliott, who reached a one-year deal with the Dallas Cowboys that has a maximum value of $3 million, according to sources at ESPN, the dollars given seem in line with a running back who has put a significant amount of miles on his tires.

The deal reunites him with the Dallas Cowboys, who selected him as the fourth overall pick in the 2016 NFL draft. Fast forward to this past weekend's draft, and the first running back was selected in the second round with pick 46 by the Carolina Panthers, who selected college football's most explosive running back, Jonathon Brooks, from the University of Texas.

"Well, Zeke, as we all know, is one of our favorites," Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said Thursday. "He's laid it on the line for this franchise. He's the ultimate competitor. I mean, he's a guy that we obviously think a lot of."

"I think a lot of times there is a question of, 'Will you really, really stick to your board?' It just felt like every time the situation was there for us to make a pick and do the right thing, it wasn't at running back," Jones said at the draft's conclusion Saturday. "We had running backs, and we'd be thinking, 'OK, our pick is coming in 10 picks; eight picks; five picks away,' then he might be taken.

"We obviously had a group of running backs there in that space where I think there were 75-85 players that we had to watch leave the board. We had a handful of backs that we would have considered, but it just didn't work out."

THE UNDERRATED OPINION
Zeke clearly has something left in the tank, and you have to love the loyalty of the Jones family to make this move to bring Elliot back to the Cowboys.

Sure, they are being criticized for not moving up to draft Jonathon Brooks, but you can’t argue with the job that Stephen Jones and his Dallas Cowboys scouting department have done over the past five years. Yes, they have not made a real playoff run, but how many teams in the NFL have three 12-5 seasons in a row?

Elliot, who played for the Patriots last year, rushed for over 600 yards and caught 51 passes for 313 yards. While he isn’t the same player he was three years ago, this was still an excellent move for a team that will use a running back committee strategy at least early in the season.