Ezekiel Elliott got his wish to be the highest-paid running back in NFL history, but how many snaps and touches will he get in his first game of the 2019 season?

According to NFL Network's Jane Slater, the Dallas Cowboys' initial plan for Elliott against the New York Giants is "about 20-25 reps," with rookie backup Tony Pollard and fullback Jamize Olawale sharing the backfield workload.

Since entering the league as a top-five draft pick in 2016, Elliott hasn't exactly been limited when on the field, capturing two rushing titles, twice getting more than 300 carries and catching a career-high 77 passes in 2018. But the 24-year-old had not practiced with the team since June minicamp before taking the field this week, raising a plethora of questions about Elliott's game-day readiness and, to countless other fans, his value as a consensus top fantasy football pick.

Twenty to 25 reps, or snaps, is also a lot different than 20-25 touches. The Cowboys' Week 1 plan for Elliott could easily change if/when Dallas assesses the running back's preparedness leading up to Sunday's divisional opener. The team might also be exaggerating its precautions for gamesmanship purposes -- in order to surprise the Giants. But if the Cowboys' plan is, in fact, to stick with 20-25 snaps for "Zeke," it'd be an understatement to suggest they want to keep the star RB under wraps to start the year.

As RotoWire's advanced stats reveal, Elliott averaged 59.3 snaps per game in 2018, when he eclipsed 1,400 rushing yards for the second time in his career. (That's almost three times as many snaps as the Cowboys' reported Week 1 plan would allow.) Additionally, Elliott touched the ball on almost 43 percent of his snaps in 2018, giving him about 25 touches per game. That means, with a similar touch-snap ratio, Elliott would be in line for just about 10 touches against the Giants on Sunday -- if he were to get 25 reps.

If that number were just carries, not carries and receptions, it wouldn't be incredibly unusual. In 2018, for example, Elliott had five games with 17 carries or less, and three of those games came in the first three weeks of the season, meaning another "light" workload to start the season wouldn't be completely out of the ordinary. But "touches" are more than carries. And Elliott taking only 20-25 snaps would all but guarantee he'll finish with fewer than 15-20 touches.

Again, all of this is predicated on NFL Network's report of the Cowboys' plan holding true on Sunday. The safe bet, considering Elliott's history, his agent's promises of the running back returning in "game shape" and the money Dallas just handed him, is to acknowledge "Zeke" could be a little more limited out of the gate -- and then bank on him getting elite-RB work anyway.

CBS Sports fantasy experts Jamey Eisenberg, Dave Richard and Heath Cummings all smartly view Elliott as a must-play vs. the Giants regardless of the 20-25-snap report.

"Honestly, I never buy into reports like this," Richard said. "You mean to tell me that if the Cowboys are in a competitive game and Ezekiel Elliott looks OK that they're going to pull him in crunch time because he's limited to '20-25 reps?' No coach would do that. If Zeke is active, you're starting him, and Pollard can't be trusted."