Tape Tells All: Tony Pollard's Week 2 Performance

September 23, 2021

Justin Carter breaks down Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Pollard's performance and evaluates whether he is a fantasy football risers going forward in the 2021 NFL season.

Welcome back to Tape Tells All, the weekly series where I look at film for something that happened in the NFL this week.

Cowboys running back Tony Pollard is coming off of a strong showing against the Chargers, rushing 13 times for 109 yards and a touchdown. He also added three catches for 31 yards. It was a huge game for Pollard, a third-year back who came into the year with two 100-yard games under his belt, both back in 2019.

So, let's talk about Pollard and his fantasy value going forward.

Background Information

We can't discuss Tony Pollard without first discussing Ezekiel Elliott.

Ezekiel Elliott has been the workhorse back for the Cowboys since 2016. He's led the NFL in yards per game three times -- but those three times were in 2016, 2017, and 2018. His yards per game have dropped every single year since his rookie year, which is definitely an interesting trend to take note of.

But Elliott has still played 78 percent of the Cowboys snaps this year. His 13.5 rushing attempts per game is a new low, though. It's clear this Cowboys coaching staff isn't relying on Zeke as much as the old Jason Garrett staff did.

But what does that mean for Pollard?

Well, he played 34 percent of the team's snaps this week after playing 24 percent in Week 1, but his usage soared this week, going from seven touches to 16 touches. He saw 10 more rushing attempts than he did in Week 1.

And there's good reason for the Cowboys getting the ball to Pollard more: he's finding success.

For instance:

As we'll see in the tape portion of this week's article, Pollard's an explosive player. Per PlayerProfiler, he was ninth in yards created per touch in 2020.

In addition to being explosive, Pollard has consistently been running tough this season, especially in comparison to the back ahead of him:

A worry with Pollard was that he was more of that finesse guy, but so far, he's breaking tackles and getting yards after contact, something Elliott isn't doing. Add another check to the "why Pollard needs more touches" box.

Pollard also hasn't been having the kind of negative plays that Elliott has been having. Sure, it's a two-game sample, but the early numbers are trending pretty heavily in Pollard's direction.

The Game Tape

Look, the tape on Pollard is probably the least interesting part of this article, because it's good tape. Pollard looks good. Pollard having talent has never really been the question when it comes to him.

Still, this column is called Tape Tells All, so we should look at a few plays.

Pollard shows some really good vision on this play above and makes a video game-esque juke to get into space. There's a spryness on this play that you don't necessarily see when you watch Elliott run the ball.

Here Pollard looks like he's had the speed slider turned up on Madden as he darts into the end zone.

Now, this next play is actually from 2019, but I still want to look at it:

This is a great example of Pollard getting usage in the passing game. He splits out wide to the left on this play, then finds a soft spot in the middle of the defense when the Lions lose track of him. From there, we see some fancy footwork, a broken tackle, and then a sprint to the end zone.

Pollard could find a lot of room in the receiving game, especially when Michael Gallup is back. The Cowboys boast arguably the NFL's best three-man receiving unit. Defenses can't account for all three players plus Pollard on a consistent basis, right?

Fantasy Impact

Okay, so Pollard is good.

But, is Pollard good for fantasy?

That's complicated and once again relies on Ezekiel Elliott.

Mike McCarthy clearly doesn't love Elliott as much as Garrett did, but Zeke is still a big part of what the Cowboys are doing. Even with fewer carries per game than ever before, he's still had more rushing attempts than guys like Nick Chubb and Najee Harris.

And Elliott is actually running more routes per game than Pollard, with 15 per game to Pollard's 6.5. Pollard's usage right now is super high when compared to the amount of snaps he's getting -- I mean, he had 16 touches on 21 snaps last game. Is that sustainable?

I wouldn't count on it.

Now, I would count on Pollard getting on the field more going forward, but he's not going to be touching the football on 76 percent of his snaps every week. His Week 1 numbers -- touches on 35 percent of his snaps -- are probably a lot closer to what we should expect.

This means that for Pollard to be a consistently productive fantasy player, we probably want him getting 10-plus touches. If we assume -- and yeah, I'm kinda pulling this number out of nowhere, sorry! -- that he gets touches on 35 percent of his snaps, we'd be looking at him needing about 28 snaps for us to feel comfortable with him.

So, that's the big question: will McCarthy give him that many snaps?

They should. It's pretty obvious that Pollard brings a new dimension to this offense. But Elliott won't just vanish -- not yet, at least.

Still, Pollard has fantasy value, albeit he's probably a boom/bust guy until he siphons off more of Elliott's work. At some point, he'll do that...I think. And if anything happened to Elliott, Pollard would be an instant RB1 play.

But for now, he's just a guy in the flex conversation. It isn't his fault, but we need to see more before we can consistently deploy him into our lineups.

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