So far this preseason missed tackles and the lack of forcing turnovers hasn't been an issue so don't think we should b worrying about that. The worry should come from the DT spots.
Dez Bryant has caught 27 TDs in three seasons with Dallas, including a career-high 12 last year
Now that his talent and maturity are in better balance, Dez Bryant is finally ready to take off
Dez Bryant is not just sorry. He is calling from his Bentley to let a reporter know that he is “super, super, super, super sorry” — roughly one super for each hour that he is overdue for an interview and photo shoot that he agreed to a week earlier. The Cowboys’ receiver is calling now to decant his contrition and to announce, at last, that he will be at the team facility within the half hour. Even before Bryant is finished apologizing, the stiffed sportswriter — worn down and codependent from decades of dealing with star athletes — is assuring him that it’s no problem.
But it is a problem. That’s the message from various figures in the Cowboys’ complex, including the indispensable Marilyn Love, executive assistant to team owner Jerry Jones. Her phone calls to Bryant on this humid morning have ignited enough of a fire under his backside to roust him out of his house and into his car.
“I saw it in college all the time,” says Derek Dooley, the ex-Tennessee Volunteers head man who is now Bryant’s position coach in Dallas. When a chasm exists between a player’s talent and his level of accountability, “sometimes there’s a lot of enabling that goes on. The people around him say, He’s so gifted, we’ll cut him some slack, offer a shortcut.”
Now entering his fourth NFL season, the 6′?2″, 222-pound Bryant is about to blow up, in the good way, in large part because the Cowboys have trimmed way back on the slack that they’re willing to cut him. Bryant — whose 92 catches for 1,382 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2012 “barely scratched the surface” of his abilities, according to coach Jason Garrett — is poised to realize his vast potential. While Bryant’s play down the stretch last season constituted a two-month highlight reel, his best catch might have been a touchdown against the Giants in October that was erased upon further review (a finger touched down out-of-bounds), but which Babe Laufenberg, for one, can’t forget. “He takes off from the middle of the end zone and makes this unbelievable grab,” says the ex–Dallas quarterback and current Cowboys radio analyst. “The guy defies physics, like Dr. J.”
Bryant is ridiculously gifted, but for the longest time his stores of talent and his maturity were out of balance. He wasn’t a bad seed: He didn’t steal, do drugs or get in trouble with the law. Yet stories about Bryant usually included the modifier “troubled.”
In his rookie year, Garrett recalls, “we could have fined him five hundred times. He’s late for this, late for that. The meeting’s at 8:30; he’s not in the meeting. Where is he? He’s in the equipment room talking to the equipment guys; he’s throwing the ball around. He misses another meeting. Where is he? He’s sleeping. Why? He was up talking to his girlfriend till five in the morning. Dez, why did you miss Tuesday’s workout? ‘My little son, I had to take him to the doctor.’ [Bryant has two boys: Zane, who is five, and three-year-old Dez Jr.] How long did that take? ‘Half an hour.’ But Dez, you had 23 hours left in the day.
“He had no structure in his life.”
The Cowboys have added structure, the light has gone on for Bryant, who might have been the best receiver in the NFL over the second half of last season — he caught 10 TDs after Week 9, far and away the league high. “It’s not like I didn’t want to do things the right way,” Bryant says. “I just really never knew how to get there, if that makes sense.”
No one ever questioned his love of the game or his work ethic. “Dez is one of my favorite teammates I’ve ever had,” says eight-time Pro Bowl tight end Jason Witten. “I gravitated toward him early because of his passion for the game. What’s happening now is that he’s raised the bar for himself. He’s attacking meetings the way he attacks practices and games. He’s becoming a true pro."
Late in a scrimmage during the Cowboys’ first day of full contact at their Oxnard, Calif., training camp, Bryant ran a 12-yard square-out to the right sideline. It wasn’t his best or his crispest route; he didn’t get much separation from the cornerback. Unfazed, quarterback Tony Romo forced a bullet through a welter of arms. The ball hit Bryant in the left shoulder pad, but he somehow pinned it to his body with one arm.
Standing on the sideline, a longtime team observer noted, “A year ago, there’s no way Romo makes that throw. That’s why Dez is going to have a big year. Romo trusts him now.”
The QB himself has a simple explanation for Bryant’s recent, dramatic improvement. “More than anything, Dez has made football a routine. He already had the competing aspect of it. He loves that aspect. But there’s a lot of little stuff the job entails, and it can be tedious. This is an all-day job. Part of his growth has come from his ability to start thinking about the game on a level deeper than just competing and playing. Once he started to grasp that, he started to improve overnight.”
True, the 24-year-old still squirms his way through meetings. But he’s in the room. He has become, as Garrett says, “a more consistent person,” doing what he’s supposed to do on a more regular basis. “He gets back to you when you text him. His routes are more precise. He knows what his hot adjustments are.”
Ten minutes into this particular interview, Garrett is interrupted by the Cowboys’ vice president of public relations, Rich Dalrymple, who asks with mild sarcasm, “Is the two minutes almost up?”
“It’s O.K.,” Garrett interjects. “I love this kid. I love talking about him. I want to make sure it’s presented the right way.”
The implication: Bryant is often presented in the wrong way. This most misunderstood of Cowboys has made unwanted headlines dating back to his junior year at Oklahoma State, in 2009, when he was suspended for most of the season by the NCAA for lying to investigators about his relationship with Deion Sanders. The 20-year-old had paid a visit chez Sanders following his sophomore season, and when NCAA gumshoes asked him about the trip Bryant panicked, assuming it was a violation.
“I lied,” he concedes. “I didn’t take any gifts. But I should’ve told them I went to his home.”
His punishment seemed (and still seems) excessively harsh — another example of NCAA overreach. “He’s never been arrested. He’s never tested positive for drugs,” his high school coach, John Outlaw, later told the Lufkin (Texas) Times. “The only thing he ever did was lie when he got scared.”
Even after Bryant moved to the pros, falling to No. 24 in the 2010 draft (despite being No. 1 in some mocks), his off-field transgressions had a penny-ante flavor: They weren’t that big a deal. Early in his career he spent profligate sums on jewelry and tickets to sporting events. He was also sued by two creditors seeking to recoup their money. While improvident, this does not exactly distinguish him among the fraternity of professional athletes. In a March 2011 incident that might have doubled as a lost scene from Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Bryant was ejected from an upscale Dallas-area shopping center because the guys he was walking around with were, according to a police report, sagging — the waistbands of their trousers had drooped, revealing their undergarments.
Then came a January 2012 nightclub altercation with the rapper Lil Wayne in Miami Beach. “One of his guys said something to me, then shoved me,” says Bryant. “I told him he could’ve just said, Excuse me.” Profanities, but no punches, were exchanged. Police were summoned; no one was arrested. Yawn.
One incident unquestionably rose to the level of disturbing. On the afternoon of July 14, 2012, Bryant’s mother, Angela, placed a 911 call to DeSoto, Texas, police, claiming that she had argued with her son and that he’d assaulted her. Bryant turned himself in and was charged with a Class A misdemeanor for domestic violence. The charge was dismissed last November on the condition that Bryant undergo anger counseling and that he not be charged with a crime for the subsequent year.
According to the police report, Bryant grabbed his mother by her T-shirt and hair, bruised her arms and “hit her across her face with his ball cap.” Asked by SI to address those allegations, Bryant says, “I would be a crazy dude, man, to put my hands on my mom. I did not put my hands on my mom, did not even attempt to put my hands on my mom” — other than to defend himself, he clarified. When she grabbed Dez by his arms (“like a DB would grab me”), he used his hands to remove hers, he says.
Did he strike her with his hat? “I remember taking my hat off and slamming it on the ground,” he says, but he denies hitting her.
So her accusations were exaggerated?
“I love my mom,” he replies. “We love each other.”
Football’s a big deal here in Texas, Brooke Stafford is noting, somewhat redundantly, as he escorts a visitor into Lufkin High’s indoor practice facility, a 37,000-square-foot Valhalla that would be the envy of many universities.
“This is where Dez had his pro day,” says Stafford, a Lufkin assistant coach who remains close to Bryant. On that afternoon Bryant, working out for NFL scouts in shoes made by a company he’d just signed with, was “slipping and sliding all over the place,” recalls Stafford, who saved the day by dashing to the equipment room and returning with a pair of Nikes. “That got spun into this story, completely untrue, that he forgot to bring shoes to his own pro day.”
Stafford hung on to both pairs of cleats, just as he keeps in his office the plaque that Bryant was awarded for being named to the 2007 Parade High School All-America team following his senior season. “[Bryant] couldn’t really hang it on his bedroom wall,” Stafford explains. “He didn’t have a bedroom.”
After giving birth to Dez at age 15, Angela Bryant had two more babies before she was 19. (The father of all three children, MacArthur Hatton, was in his early 40s when Dez was born.) Struggling to make ends meet, Angela started selling rock cocaine when she was 19. Four years later, when Dez was eight, she was arrested for selling crack to a police informant, and she spent 18 months at the Lucile Plane State Jail in Dayton, Texas, an hour and a half down Route 59 from Lufkin.
While his mother was incarcerated, Dez moved in with Hatton, from whom he is now estranged. That move began an unstable, nomadic period that lasted until his senior year at Lufkin, when he moved in with his girlfriend at the time. Those frequent changes of address overwhelmed Bryant’s high school coach, Outlaw, who told The New York Times in 2008 that “I [took] him to probably six or seven different places he called home.?.?.?. He was from trailer to trailer and house to house.”
Outlaw died two days before Christmas in 2011, felled by a heart attack at 58. While they certainly mentioned his 303?87?3 record as a coach, obituaries gave greater emphasis to his advocacy for the underdog. One quotes a coworker describing the young men the coach gravitated toward: “Those kids who had unstable lives at home. Those kids who needed someone to believe in them. Those kids who hung on to football as a lifeline.”
This was Dez Bryant distilled to three sentences. Before his junior season Bryant met with Stafford, whose duties include making sure that the transcripts of students who aspire to play college football pass NCAA muster. For Bryant that path looked especially daunting. Diagnosed with a learning disability in elementary school, he’d been taking special-education classes. He didn’t even get on the field for the Panthers varsity until late in his sophomore season, but with two years of high school remaining, Bryant informed Stafford that he wanted to take regular classes in order to meet the NCAA’s standards.
According to Stafford, Bryant had been steered into special ed more for his behavior than for any learning issues. When he bore down, “Dez could do the work,” says the coach. “And he did it.” In his junior and senior seasons, Bryant met all the core requirements for math and English. “He basically resurrected himself.”
Bryant’s unwavering belief in himself served as a polestar to help him navigate the changes of address, the stigma of special ed and the confusion he felt while in high school, when his mother explained that her sexual orientation had changed, that she was gay.
Regardless of the roof over his head, he drifted off each night with the certitude that he had been put on earth to play football: It would raise him up and out of Lufkin. “I always felt chosen,” he says. “By that I mean, God gave me the ability to help myself and my family. I always had that in my head.”
“Dez knew what he wanted, and knew how to make it happen,” says Stafford. “He’s always had his eye on this moment.”
He has not always had his eye on the clock. Three hours and 45 minutes after the scheduled appointment, he rolls into Valley Ranch. After posing for a photographer for an hour, he decides it’s time to lift some weights; the interview has to wait. “Meet me at David’s house at 5:30,” he tells this reporter, who replies, wishfully, “It’s a date!”
David Wells, whom Bryant describes as an adviser, is a brusque, profane and delightful character, personable yet somehow vaguely menacing, who appears to have sprung from the pages of an Elmore Leonard novel. The Dallas-based former bail-bond magnate is well-known to the city’s cops, lawyers and judges; one former D.A. nicknamed him The Wolf, after the problem solver played by Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. Wells’s unique ability to smooth over legal problems and keep them out of the media has made him a valuable ally to professional teams in the Metroplex. And his business has been good to him: He lives down the street from Bryant in a tony part of DeSoto, in a sprawling home whose amenities include a basketball court, swimming pool, in-home theater and a game room where, on this evening, Wells is running the table on a family friend in a lopsided game of eight ball.
Sitting on a bar stool, smiling at his host’s trash talking (“We got a major ***-whupping goin’ on right now”), is Josh Brent, who has been at Wells’s place nearly every day since being arrested last December on a charge of intoxicated manslaughter in the death of Cowboys teammate Jerry Brown Jr. (Brent’s trial begins on Sept. 23.) In the interim Brent, 25, has twice tested positive for marijuana. On July 18 he retired from football in order to get “the priorities in my life in order.”
Wells’s lavish abode is a kind of home for wayward Cowboys. Bengals cornerback Adam (Pacman) Jones lived there during his one-year tenure with Dallas, in 2008. Even as he values his friendship with Jones, it angers Wells when people suggest that Bryant’s missteps are remotely equivalent to the serial malfeasance of Pacman. “Dez was in this house when he got drafted three years ago,” says Wells. “I’ve watched him mature into a man. This is a good person.”
But not, alas, a totally reliable one. At our appointed hour of meeting, Bryant rolls up to Wells’s house in his black Bentley .?.?. and keeps on rolling. He’s going to play some hoops at a nearby 24 Hour Fitness, he shouts through the open car window. He’ll be back in half an hour.
Ninety minutes later, the reporter walks into the health club. Bryant’s brother, Shaun, intercepts him. “We’ll be at David’s in a half hour.” Two hours after that, the reporter gives up and checks into a hotel.
Bryant seems miffed, the following morning, to find the reporter parked in front of his house. Walking across the yard, he is unsmiling. “What did you want to talk about?”
The uninvited visitor wants to delve into Bryant’s upbringing. Why did he move so often? Did he ever go without food or shelter?
“I knew it,” he says. But he’s not going there. “Me and my family aren’t ready to talk about that,” he declares with finality, before adding what can only be described as a teaser. “When you hear the whole story, I promise you, you’re gonna be overwhelmed.”
Zane, his five-year-old, has emerged from the front door. But where is Dez Jr.? “He’s been in a timeout,” Bryant explains, “for spraying mustard on the floor.”
Tough to blame a three-year-old for being amused by the flatulent sound created by a squeezed mustard dispenser, the visitor points out. On the other hand, discipline is an important part of parenting.
“I don’t coddle ‘em,” says Bryant.
He is determined to give his boys a smoother, more structured upbringing than his own. “They are my life, my heart,” he says, his initial reserve now melted. “I couldn’t control what was going on around me when I was younger. But I control everything now.
“I’m a work in progress, just like everybody else in this world. I’ve made mistakes, and I won’t go down that path again. I’ve been through the bad things already. There ain’t nothing but the right things for me from here on out.”
Better late than never.
, is santana no longer the #1 option at WR anymore over there?
Garcon tho?
Its almost that time fellas.
Ron Leary is running and should be back in time for Game 1, which will make our oline a lot better than what we saw in our dress rehearsal against the Bengals (which wasn't too shabby after a couple series).
Claibourne has me worried as he hasn't played a single snap after the HOF game due to his knee injury, but he states he'll be ready week 1.
Ratliff had an interview where he states he doesn't want to be a distraction but claims that there is some dissention between him and the team. He won't give away the reason but states the Cowboys "know the reason."
Gavin Escobar has caught just about everything his way but my God, he really can't block (we knew this picking him in the second round). If our o-line can protect Romo, going spread offense with 2 WR and lining him and Witten up as WR's should do wonders for our red zone.
Romo and Dez have developed such a great trust relationship, its amazing. Dez is EXACTLY where he is supposed to be all the time and Romo knows this. This definitely was not present in his first 3 years. Rumors were they simplified the offense for him mid season, having him run basic slants, and post routes. Now that Dez has grasped the system, barring an injury, expect 1800 yards, 90 rec, and 14TDs.
And LOL @ you guys bumping that "Is Dez is overrated" thread. I remember when I created that thread and having to argue with these NT GMs. All I was stating to these clowns was that Dez was right on pace when compared to the greats. Its interesting how Cowboys fans are perceived as being "delusional" and "biased" but these guys are the exact same as the people they are crtical of except on the opposite side of the spectrum. Their blind hate is no different than a Cowboys fan extreme bias.
Lastly, I was thinking of bumping that thread as well, today matter of fact. But Im going to wait for one of yall to do it
I'm waiting for Dez to kill the Giants at least before I post there, dude in the prediction thread said they'd hold him under 60 yards
This is the most excited I've been about a season in a long time. We can get off to a really great start with the easy schedule and the D looks like It'll really be flames.
I'll admit it's kinda childish but I'm really taking notes and bookmarking alot of the hate this season. No one is going like me if Dallas is still playing into January this year.
I need to find that prediction thread. Who is the Giants #1 CB? Prince? Cory Webster?
. 
remember watching that as a kid and being livid.
http://niketalk.com/t/567416/nfl-2013-predictions-thread/210#post_18623633
So much blind hate. There is absolutely no logical reason to expect Dallas to be worse than last year barring injury. Dudes say we're finishing last in the division, going 6-10 etc and no one bats an eyelash. But let someone say anything remotely positive about us and they're delusional
Like I said, if we win the division I'm going crazy on here. If we advance in the playoffs or Dez has a season better than Megatron I'll probably end up getting banned
Giants have such a bad secondary. Dez can put up 850 + yards vs the East alone this season
I think we would've easily won the division if it wasn't for injuries. Every team has them but nobody had multiple injuries to one particular unit like we did. Only guys who started on Defense vs the Giants opening night that also started vs the Skins was Mo, Carr, Hatcher, Ware and Spencer. And Demarcus was playing with one arm
If Sean and Ware alone stayed healthy last season we easily win another two games.
People don't realize that Dallas went 5-3 once Dez started balling. He brought the offense to another level.
If he maintains that (he will) plus the old Miles is back (he's healthy) and Romo cuts down on the turnovers (a guarantee) AND the D can at least be in the top 12 in turnovers... i expect good things.
Edit:
So either they keep running that option and destroy RGIII's career or they don't run him and he has to throw 30 times a game. RGIII ain't about that drop back passer life.
Telling y'all, I'm not worried about the teams in the division. Especially Bob.
Kid Fiasco said:
and I'm the only one apparently who saw hypocrisy in that. He's entering that non slanderable class Witten and Ware are in imho.
:x :x :x
This Is Not The Same Ol' Story For The Cowboys
Flashback: Dec. 30, 2012, Landover, Md., 8:31 p.m. (EST), FedExField.
That is, if you can bear it.
Here are the Cowboys missing from the starting lineup:
C Phil Costa, DT Kenyon Coleman, NT Jay Ratliff, LB Sean Lee, LB Bruce Carter, S Barry Church, P Chris Jones.
Then, by the time the game concluded, a 28-18, NFC East title-clinching victory for the Washington ********, WR Miles Austin was out with an ankle sprain; WR Dwayne Harris had a high ankle sprain that left him in a walking boot the next day; WR Cole Beasley sprained the AC joint in his shoulder; QB Tony Romo suffered a broken rib; and WR Dez Bryant, already playing with a fractured finger in need of postseason surgery, managed to play through back spasms so bad he was carried from the locker room to the bus, then to his car upon the charter flight’s landing at DFW and driven right to the hospital for overnight observations.
Oh, and DeMarcus Ware, the one-armed man, finally completed an entire month of playing with a hyperextended elbow and a labrum tear in his shoulder in need of offseason surgery.
By game’s end, a crushing ending at that, here are some of the guys with whom the Cowboys were trying to clinch their second NFC East title in four years:
C Ryan Cook, LB Dan Connor, LB Ernie Sims, S Eric Frampton, CB Sterling Moore, CB Michael Coe, S Charlie Peprah, DT Brian Schaeffering, LB Brady Poppinga, Sean Lissemore starting at nose tackle and rotation guy Marcus Spears starting at defensive end. Of the group, only Spears, Lissemore and Connor had gone to training camp with the Cowboys, and of the 11, only four have an opportunity of returning for this season.
On top of that, the Cowboys had set some franchise records for futility, having rushed for the fewest yards in franchise history during a 16-game season; collecting the fewest takeaways in the franchise’s 53 seasons; and allowing opponents to not only rush for 2,003 yards, second most given up since 1986, but also average 4.5 yards a carry, second highest since 1963.
Seriously.
Yet there they were, owning the ball at their own 29-yard line, first-and-10, with 3:06 to play in the season, going no-huddle and trailing just 21-18. No joshing … and no excuses, just facts.
Yes, the entire country knows what happened next, the visibility just part of the dinner that comes when playing with the blue star on your silver helmet.
So look, when owner Jerry Jones says he is encouraged by this 2013 version of the Dallas Cowboys speeding toward the start of the regular season, do not simply dismiss it with, oh, that’s just Jerry being Jerry.
When COO Stephen Jones says these Cowboys can “compete” with any team in this league, do not simply accuse him of being a chip off the old block.
Or when head coach Jason Garrett expresses optimism, it’s not just the talk of a red-headed Pollyanna.
There does seem to be something brewing here out at The Ranch, and it does not have that stale smell as many want to suggest, Thursday night’s final preseason game littered with backups and castoffs notwithstanding, as the Cowboys began the process Friday of whittling down a 75-man roster to 53 by 5 p.m. Saturday.
Are they perfect? Absolutely not, and few teams are, including the season-opening opponent New York Football Giants, who very well could be playing without two starting offensive linemen, have just lost their backup running back with a broken leg, just had wide receiver Victor Cruz get out of the walking boot protecting his injured heel, had just moved defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul off PUP following June back surgery and finally had just gotten corner Terrell Thomas back on the field after missing the past two seasons with not one but two ACL tears.
The Cowboys do have a few windshield chips, most notably having to place projected starting defensive tackle Jay Ratliff on the reserve/physically unable to perform list, meaning at the very least he must miss six full weeks with a surgically repaired sports hernia from back in December evidently still problematic. That in the aftermath of already having lost Tyrone Crawford to a torn Achilles in the first practice of training camp, and Josh Brent to his overshadowing legal problems stemming from the intoxication manslaughter charges following his one-car accident killing passenger and teammate Jerry Brown back in December.
Headaches persist at defensive end, expecting yet not knowing for sure if Anthony Spencer will practice this coming week for the first time since having his knee scoped back at the beginning of training camp. Also on the offensive line at guard, expecting but not knowing for sure if Ronald Leary and Mackenzy Bernadeau will return next week in time to possibly start against the Giants. That had the Cowboys scrambling for viable contingency plans, including moving Doug Free to guard if Jermey Parnell, who missed the entire offseason (hamstring) and nearly all of training camp (knee), was ready to play right tackle (he was better Thursday night).
And, you might cringe knowing the Cowboys basically finished this week with only two healthy safeties behind starters Barry Church and Will Allen, they being third-round draft choice J.J. Wilcox and rookie free agent from Saginaw Valley State Jeff Heath since out with injuries have been Eric Frampton (calf), Danny McCray (hamstring) and Matt Johnson (ankle).
So yeah, not perfect, but still better than where the Cowboys were eight months ago to the day. When healthy, this offensive line, with the additions of first-round draft choice Travis Frederick at center and projected starter Leary at left guard, plus Free playing much better at right tackle, is an upgrade.
The defensive line, even minus Ratliff, is better with a healthy Ware and the resurgent Jason Hatcher once Spencer returns. The return of Church helps the safety position immensely and I think Allen has been better than the perceived Band Aid upon signing. Plus, always been a fan of the 4-3 and of Monte Kiffin, remembering him going all the way back to his defensive coordinator days at Nebraska in the Big 8.
Just think of Lee and Carter possibly playing more than six games together at linebacker, a healthy Bryant and Austin, the addition of Terrance Williams and continued progress of Harris. Jason Witten actually healthy from the start of the season, Murray back in tip-top health and the employment of a two-tight end offense surely beats playing Lawrence Vickers at fullback.
And yes, what’s not to like about the empowerment of Tony Romo. He’s always been a highly-engaged player, but now even more so. And just what if the Cowboys are able to better protect Romo so he doesn’t suffer another career-high amount of sacks like last season, and are able to spread the ball around (i.e. run the darn ball) so he doesn’t have to account for 78 percent of the offensive touchdowns. Yes, like last season?
“The time is upon us, so it’s time to go,” says veteran corner Brandon Carr. “This is what it is. This is from last year, all the bitterness you had in your mouth, now it’s time to spit it out and go out here and rewrite the history books.
“Last year is last year. Now, it’s time to write a new story.”
And for sure, complete with a new ending.
) Only three players remain that were brought in during Wade Phillips time as HC for the entire season.
