NFL Week 9: Ezekiel Elliott will play, Jimmy Garoppolo likely will not, injuries, fantasy

[TheWild ™]

Their names made the biggest noninjury headlines of the week in the NFL and this week one is expected to continue to play a big role for his team while the other is likely to be a backup for a while.

Thanks to a courtroom Hail Mary, the Dallas Cowboys will have the services of running back Ezekiel Elliott when they play the Kansas City Chiefs in AT&T Stadium in an important game for the 4-3 team as it chases the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC East. For the third time, a federal court intervened Friday to keep Elliott, who is fighting a six-game suspension, eligible, granting a request by the NFL Players Association to keep the suspension on hold while the union appeals a ruling Monday.

It’s a risky gambit by the Cowboys, who could lose Elliott at a critical stretch of the season if all legal means are exhausted, but his recent productivity shows just how valuable he is. Over the last three games, he has rushed for 413 yards, with 150 coming last week in a victory over the Redskins.

For the Cowboys, having Elliott against the Chiefs, who struggle to stop the run, is a big plus. For the Chiefs, well, they have Alex Smith, who hasn’t thrown an interception yet this season.

In San Francisco, the 49ers will try for the ninth time this season to win a game and, while Jimmy Garoppolo drew all the attention when the team sent a second-round draft pick for him to New England for him ahead of Tuesday’s trade deadline. Garoppolo, long Tom Brady’s understudy, will be active for the game against the Arizona Cardinals, but so will starter C.J. Beathard. Garoppolo hasn’t had much time to learn Kyle Shanahan’s offense, but there’s a chance his education will come under fire because Beathard may have taken 34 percent of the team’s snaps, but he’s absorbed 41 percent of the sacks the team has given up and has been hit hard another half-dozen times.

Shanahan admitted that getting Garoppolo ready is a “challenge” — both for him and the team. “I don’t care who you are or how many hours you put in, there’s no way you can get it all down in that short amount of time. If he does get the opportunity to go in, you got to scale it down. You have to wristband a bunch of stuff,” Shanahan said. “You got to be very selective in what you call and make sure he understands what you’re doing. It’s not just the pass plays. It’s the snap count, the cadence, how to get out of the huddle, where the run plays are going, the ballhandling and all the little things that people take for granted that take a lot of time to work on. We’ve got in enough this week so that we know we can survive to a degree if he had to come in.”