Jerome Bettis blames lack of veteran leadership for Ezekiel Elliott’s off-field issues
The Dallas Cowboys have a young core, particularly on offense, and Jerome Bettis believes it’s factoring into some of Ezekiel Elliott’s current problems.
The Hall of Fame running back believes that part of Elliott’s issue is that there is no veteran in the locker room to pull him aside and tell him what not to do.
“Here’s part of the problem. That team, in terms of the core players, they’re young guys. You don’t have any of those guys able to pull him back and say ‘Listen, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, listen to me when I say these kind of things,'” Bettis said, via Will Brinson of CBS Sports. “You don’t have that kind of guy in the locker room yet to do that. They’re kind of flying blind so to speak, because you don’t have … the quarterback is the same age and you don’t have that guy to pull him back and say ‘Hey, shut it down.'”
With all due respect to Bettis, quarterback Dak Prescott — who is only two years older than Elliott – has had no such off-field problems in the NFL despite playing in the same locker room. And it shouldn’t take a locker room veteran for Elliott to know that getting involved in a bar fight is a bad idea. Besides, reports indicate that Elliott has been repeatedly warned by teammates about his off-field conduct. At some point, he himself must be the one held accountable.
