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If you are looking for some optimism regarding a potential holdout from Ezekiel Elliott, you’ve come to the right place.
Word over the last week has gotten pretty radical for Zeke. First we learned that he was considering holding out from the beginning of training camp, and then it was reported that he was planning on leaving the country this week. With the Cowboys leaving for Oxnard on Thursday that made for a lot of confused faces.
Both of those reports came from ProFootballTalk, but on Monday morning NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport added to it all by noting that all options were still “on the table” for Zeke meaning that holding out seems to be at the very least that... an option.
It makes sense if this has got you worn out. With actual football so close that should be the focus, right? Plus, why are we worrying about a potential holdout? For all we know there’s nothing to see here.
NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo didn’t quite say that on Monday afternoon but he did somewhat offer it up as another option. He noted that apparently Zeke made a similar threat, if you want to call it that, with regards to spring practices and that those ended up not coming to fruition.
.@MikeGarafolo: Behind the scenes Zeke has been saying stuff for a while now. There was some talk he might not show up in the spring, and then he did.
— RJ Ochoa (@rjochoa) July 22, 2019
(via @nflnetwork) pic.twitter.com/RfsV7Xn8Sm
Garafolo starts this hit by giving credit to PFT for the story about Elliott maybe holding out and makes it clear that he’s only trying to further clarify the picture. There’s clearly been varying levels of discussion regarding Zeke and his new deal, but if he truly did consider not reporting in the spring and eventually did then it stands to reason the same could happen here and now with training camp.
It doesn’t feel like there are a great number of people who are buying that Elliott will in fact miss camp’s beginning (60% of BTB thinks he’ll show up without a new deal). Maybe all of this small talk is only meant to apply a bit more pressure on the Cowboys in hopes of getting a deal done, business can get complicated like that sometimes.
We’ll have our answer in a few days.