The Midnight Hour: Do Ezekiel Elliott and the Cowboys have a deal - pending a 'monkey-wrench' issue?

The Midnight Hour: Do Ezekiel Elliott and the Cowboys have a deal - pending a 'monkey-wrench' issue?

FRISCO - Holdout running back Ezekiel Elliott is in receipt of a new contract extension offer from the Dallas Cowboys that as of Saturday night all parties involved found satisfactory ... until on Sunday when into the picture came one remaining obstacle, a "monkey wrench'' - the nature of which remains a mystery.

Sources tell me that the Cowboys and Zeke's camp exchanged a barrage of contractual ideas on Saturday - let's call them "ping-pong proposals'' - and that the reason most of Sunday was so quiet is because the Saturday talks essentially landed upon an agreed-to neighborhood.

Then came Sunday night, and a glitch. I am left wondering if it is behavior-related. And I am wondering if at the last minute someone in the Zeke camp had a change of heart regarding the financial specifics -- especially the guaranteed money involved. (Which of course is in part tied to "behavior.'')

Charles Robinson of Yahoo reports something even more specific, suggesting that agent Rocky Arceneaux may have issued a new counterproposal that "frustrated'' Cowboys management.

Update on Zeke Elliott and the #Cowboys: the two sides communicated in the late afternoon. Dallas is frustrated with the last exchange. After Saturday’s momentum, Cowboys expected more compromise to get a deal done today. Didn’t happen, so it’s on to Monday and a hopeful reset.

— Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) September 2, 2019

And now we've arrived at what Cowboys COO Stephen Jones terms "The Midnight Hour.''

Progress this weekend was such that a friend of Elliott's tells me that the All-Pro running back had plans to be back in DFW by now, and in the shadow of The Star, where the Cowboys begin practice on Monday morning in preparation for the NFL season opener against the Giants on Sunday. (We are working to confirm Zeke's whereabouts.)

A source close to the negotiations told us Dallas' proposal early last week would put his new annual salary “close to the Todd Gurley range.” Presumably, the Cowboys moved north of that during the Saturday talks.

The Cowboys as of a month ago were willing to pay Elliott more than the Jets’ Le’Veon Bell ($13 mil APY) but less than the Rams’ Gurley ($14 mil APY). And the more the sides have talked, the more the Zeke offer has caught up with the Gurley money.

Zeke's desire includes surpassing Gurley’s other contractual numbers ($60 million total with $45 million guaranteed); two sources tell us that Dallas has had less of a problem with that first number than it does with the latter.

But now? It seems that Zeke's side has balked at that latter guaranteed number.

“I'm optimistic that we can get Zeke's deal done,” owner Jerry Jones said. “But we're gonna play football one way or the other."

As of Saturday night, all involved believed Ezekiel Elliott was going to be back with the Cowboys, too, one way or the other ... but now that won't happen until the "monkey wrench'' is extracted from the negotiations.