Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott lost his latest court battle and now appears poised to serve a six-game suspension for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy starting this week. At 10:15 p.m., Katherine Polk Failla, U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York, denied the NFL Players Association’s request for a preliminary injunction to block Elliott’s suspension after hearing oral arguments from both sides in court on Monday.
Failla allowed for 24 hours for Elliott and his team to consider its options for appeal in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals before her ruling is enforced. But as it stands now, Elliott is going to sit out games against the Chiefs, Falcons, Eagles, Chargers, Washington and the Giants; he’d be eligible to return for the Cowboys’ final three games of the regular season, beginning with a Week 15 contest against the Raiders.
Without Elliott, who has rushed for 690 yards in seven games this season, the Cowboys would turn to Darren McFadden, Alfred Morris and Rod Smith in the backfield, and lean on one of the better offensive lines in the league to continue to open up holes. But there’s no doubt that the Cowboys’ hopes of building on the success of 2016, a goal that is already off to a bumpy start, would become even more challenging without Elliott on the field.
Elliott, in his second NFL season, was disciplined by the NFL after a former girlfriend alleged that he physically abused her last summer in Columbus, Ohio. Elliott was not charged with a crime. This court case is not about his guilt or innocence, but rather, whether or not the NFL followed a fundamentally fair process in punishing Elliott. Perhaps the ruling should come as no surprise: The court that upheld the NFL’s four-game suspension of Tom Brady in Deflategate has appellate jurisdiction over the court that is hearing the Elliott litigation.