SEATTLE — Ezekiel Elliott had more than 100 yards rushing in a game for the first time this season, but the Dallas Cowboys running back took the blame for a 24-13 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.
“I had a poor performance today,” Elliott said. “Did well in the run game, but overall, I dropped the ball. That loss is on me.”
Elliott finished with 127 yards on 16 carries, and his 7.9 yards per rush were the second-best of his career in a game, but he was flagged for an illegal touch of a forward pass that negated what would have been a 31-yard touchdown catch in the second quarter, and he fumbled in the fourth quarter with the Cowboys attempting a comeback.
“I had no idea [I was out of bounds],” Elliott said. “That’s on me. I’ve got to have better awareness of the sideline. That’s it.”
Instead of a game-tying touchdown, the Cowboys had to settle for a 50-yard field goal by Brett Maher.
Elliott had four runs of at least 19 yards, but on his season-high 26-yarder in the fourth quarter, he fumbled for the first time this season. Safety Bradley McDougald tracked Elliott from behind and chopped the ball free for Justin Coleman to recover with 10:46 remaining and Seattle up 24-6.
“You can say whatever, but at the end of the day, when you’ve got the ball in your hands, that’s the team in your hands,” Elliott said. “Me being a leader on the team, me being a better player on this team, I got to do a better job of taking care of the ball. That cost us the game.”
Later in the fourth quarter, Elliott was out of bounds again when attempting to catch a Dak Prescott pass.
“He gets a lot of different machinations of handling that ball out there, Zeke, and we intend to keep him doing that,” Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones said. “I know he’d like to have his reference point back, obviously, when he was out of bounds when he made the touchdown, and you know he’d like to have that ball back when he was fighting for yardage. He’s a lot to handle out there for the defense, and I’m just glad we’ve got him.”