Time for Cowboys to face facts: Tony Pollard is their best running back, and here’s why the debate is over

It’s time that we had a real, considered discussion about Tony Pollard. No, probably not the one you’re thinking of. The so-called debate between Pollard and Ezekiel Elliott is over. It has been over for a while, and nearly everyone outside of the Jones family has long since recognized it. 

Put very simply: Pollard is and has been for some time the better, more effective player. He’s the more efficient runner both between and outside the tackles. He creates more yards after contact and more explosive plays, and he has the higher success rate on his rushing attempts. All of this is true despite Pollard’s having run into heavy boxes quite a bit more often than Elliott this season. He’s also the better pass-catcher and yards after catch threat; and yes, despite what you may have heard, he is at least a comparable pass-blocker, if not an outright better one at this point. (Leaving aside this fact, the idea that playing time should be doled out based on which running back is the better pass-blocker when the two players in question have combined for 58 pass-blocking snaps in 10 games is rather ridiculous.) 

None of the foregoing means Elliott should be made inactive or that he’s useless or that he should never touch the ball or any of the other various straw-man arguments people try in vain to refute; it just means that the days of his getting more snaps and/or touches than Pollard should be in the rearview mirror. If the Cowboys want to be a serious team, they need to give their best players the most playing time, and Pollard is rather obviously the best player on the team at his position. But one of the reasons that the Cowboys’ refusal to use Pollard more often is so frustrating is that he’s not just the best back on the team. He’s one of the very few best in the league. 

You can explain most running back production by looking at the quality of blocking he gets, but according to just about any measurement of production that is actually within the back’s control, he’s a top-5 to top-10 player at the position. Yards per carry? Pollard’s 6.03 rank second among the 50 backs with 50-plus carries this season. (The only one ahead of him is Rashaad Penny, who hasn’t played since Week 5.) Success rate? His 42.7% mark ranks 10th, according to Tru Media. Avoiding negative runs? Pollard’s been stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage just 12.6% of the time, 10th-best among that group. Explosive gains? His 12.6% explosive-carry rate ranks fifth. Yards after contact? His 4.49 per-carry average is best in the league by a long shot. (And nearly half a yard more per carry than Elliott averages overall. Sheesh.) Yards gained on first-down runs? He’s at 5.4 per carry, ninth-best. Yards gained against stacked boxes? Also 5.4 per carry, which is fourth-best. Short-yardage conversion rate? The league average is 66.3%, but Pollard has converted 75% of the time. All this despite a yards before contact per carry average of just 1.53, which ranks 18th among the same group of players. 

Anybody who tells you that he can’t run the ball up the middle or run with power or gain the tough yards is either lying to you, or lying to themselves. It helps that we’ve also actually seen him do it over and over. He may look slight, but Pollard is a sturdy, 6-foot, 209 pounds. (By way of comparison, Dalvin Cook is 5-10, 210;  Miles Sanders is 5-11, 211; and Alvin Kamara is 5-10, 215. In other words, he’s similarly-sized to plenty of lead backs about whom nobody really has real questions regarding their ability to make those types of runs.) And he packs some power into that frame, allowing him to break tackles, drag the pile forward, or simply run through defenders. 

Of course, the ability to break the long run is what makes Pollard truly special. Only Nick Chubb, Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry, Jeff Wilson, Travis Etienne, and Kenneth Walker have more 15-plus-yard runs this season, and those players have out-carried him by 57, 95, 15, 28, and 18, respectively. Pollard’s specialty is not just speed: His 40-yard dash time of 4.52 seconds ranks in just the 61st percentile among running backs, according to Mockdraftable. Where he really shines is in the agility department. His ability to change directions while maintaining full speed is elite, and he throttles down to stop and then throttle back up as well as any back in the league. 

His best weapon is the jump-cut, where he conjures images of LeSean McCoy. Take a look at any of his big runs, and you’re likely to see him hop-skip his way from one gap to another or stick his foot in the ground and slide his way past a defender in the open field. This move is all over his tape. 

Pollard is also a smooth, natural pass-catcher who excels at creating additional yardage with the ball in his hands. He ranks 15th in yards per route run among the aforementioned group of 50 running backs, as he’s gained 134 yards with his 15 catches on 25 targets this season. The Cowboys rarely throw the ball to their backs, though. Just 12.3% of their pass attempts have gone to running backs, according to Tru Media, the third-lowest rate in the league.

When he actually does get the opportunity, Pollard makes the most of it. His 9.27 yards after catch per reception are sixth-best in the NFL. He’s incredibly tough to get ahold of in the open field, and the first defender rarely brings him down to the ground. 

The most common criticism of Pollard’s game is of his pass-blocking. Well, let’s just say it appears out of date. There are 40 running backs who have pass-blocked on at least 20 snaps this season, according to Pro Football Focus. Pollard ranks third among that group in pass-blocking grade, and has allowed only two pressures on his 33 pass-blocking snaps. It’s notable that his pass-blocking grade was about equal to Elliott’s last season and is far better this year (Zeke ranks 17th out of the group of 50, which is still pretty good), and also that the Cowboys have kept him in to block on a greater share of his passing-down snaps (20%) than they have Elliott (17.2%), indicating that they indeed trust him just as much, if not more than the starter in those situations.  

Take a look at the film and you can see plenty of instances of his being attentive, and both willing and able to pick up free rushers anywhere across the formation. 

No matter what area of the game you examine, Pollard excels. He is a complete back, and as we have seen on the three occasions where Elliott has sat out a game, he is more than capable of doing everything, for the entire game. (The ridiculous notion that he could only play 30 snaps in a game has also been disproven.) In three games he’s played without Elliott, Pollard has notched 18 touches for 132 yards and two touchdowns, 15 touches for 147 yards and three touchdowns, and 25 touches for 128 yards and a touchdown. He’s averaged nearly 6.6 yards per carry and over 10.2 yards per reception. The Cowboys have scored 41, 49, and 28 points in those three games. He can do it all, and do it at a high level. The team just needs to let him.