Eli Manning

The Giants might have the player who can stop Ezekiel Elliott and the Cowboys' run game

Published Dec. 14, 2016 8:36 a.m. ET

Dieter Kurtenbach

Unless you're a New York Jets or Giants fan, you probably don't know who Damon Harrison is.

The defensive tackle signed with the Giants this past offseason after four years with the Jets. He signed a big contract, but all in all, he's as anonymous as NFL starters get.

But if you're here, it's fair to surmise that you know who Ezekiel Elliott is.

That's because the Dallas Cowboys rookie running back is the talk of the league (and this news organization) — he leads the NFL in rushing, and he plays for the most popular team in the league, which also has the best record.

But you can bet that Elliott knows who Harrison is, though.

That's because Harrison is the player who could singlehandedly shut down Elliott and the Cowboys' awesome run game.

Harrison doesn't get anywhere near the same kind of love or league-wide attention as fellow defensive tackles Aaron Donald and Ndamukong Suh, and that's a shame. Such is the plight of the run stoppers — all the work and none of the glory.

But we're here to give Harrison some of that love, because in his craft, he's the best the NFL has to offer.

Harrison has held the title of the NFL's best run stopper for two seasons now, and on Sunday, in the Giants and Cowboys' pivotal NFC East matchup in the Meadowlands, he'll get to show off those skills against the best run-blocking offensive line in the league and the uber-talented rookie back who has thrived behind it.

If ever there was a time to become a household name, a Sunday night game in December against the league's No. 1 ratings grabber ranks high on the list.

And now, to the wonky stuff that explains why Harrison is so good and Elliott and the Cowboys' offensive line should be tested in the run game Sunday:

The Cowboys run a zone blocking scheme that puts an incredible burden on opposing defensive tackles — more specifically one-techniques or nose guards — in a four-man front, like Harrison.

So far this year, the Cowboys' offensive line has dominated some of the best interior defenders in the game — Minnesota's Linval Joseph, Cleveland's Danny Shelton, Philadelphia's Fletcher Cox, and Baltimore's Timmy Jernigan, to name the best of the best. But while those players grade out well against the run, only Joseph and Shelton could be considered true one-techniques.

But those players aren't as good as Harrison, who, according to ProFootballFocus, registers a run stop on 17.1 percent of his snaps, five points higher than even Donald, the league's consensus best interior defender.

Harrison's job is to cause as much of a ruckus as possible in an effort to draw attention from the offensive line and open up gaps for other defenders to make plays, and because of that, he might be able to pull off what Joseph wasn't able to do last week — command a double team from the Cowboys.

The competition is impressive, but Dallas might have the best center in the NFL in Travis Frederick, who is an expert in getting around and establishing position in the Cowboys' zone run-blocking scheme. Combined with unquestionably the best guard tandem in the league, opposing nose tackles, one-techniques, and defensive tackles — whatever you want to call them — have found tough sledding.

But remember, Dallas' only loss this year came to Harrison and the Giants.

In that game, Elliott ran 20 times for 51 yards, his worst game of the year.

Many have attributed that poor contest to the fact that it was Elliott's first NFL game, but what if the reason for the low-level production was Harrison's influence on the Giants' defensive line and Cowboys' offensive line?

It's hard to determine how effective someone was in stuffing the run — often it's the unblocked linebacker who fills the gap and registers the tackle, allowing him to show up on the stat sheet — but Harrison, in tandem with his pass-rushing counterparts, certainly commanded undue attention from the Cowboys' offensive line in that season opener and helped the Giants' defensive line register 15 quarterback pressures and 10 hurries.

The Giants, despite their 8-4 record, have plenty of questions heading into Sunday's game: Can they get a pass rush without Jason Pierre-Paul? Is Eli Manning capable of another impressive late-season run? Is Odell Beckham Jr. all there?

But one question they shouldn't have is: Will Harrison disrupt what the Cowboys want to do in the running game? The defensive tackle will do his job — it'll be up to the other 10 members of the defense to make the most of the opportunities he creates. If they can, the Giants will have a shot to sweep the Cowboys and make Harrison a household name (and give him some of the credit he deserves). If not, Harrison will have another game where he does most of the work and gets none of the credit.