i will say it again.
for the combined seasons of 2015 thru 2017, 75 NFL receivers caught at least 100 passes. Two Cowboys are in the top 25 in catch percentage, Williams and Beasely.
Dez Bryant is ranked dead last......75th.......in catch percentage.Williams and Beasely were catching balls from the same exact quarterbacks as Dez.
For the combined seasons of 2015 thru 2017, Dez Bryant caught exactly 50% of all balls thrown to him....half.
Dez never mastered his routes, never put in the time and effort to perfect his craft....certainly not to the same extent as the previous #88's.
I met a guy names Robert Steele once. As big a Cowboy fan as I was back in the 70's, I was shocked to learn that he played for the Dallas Cowboys. Why did I never hear of him? He was Drew Pearson's backupin 1978. Enough said. Mr.Steele told me that Drew took ALL the reps. He demanded nothing short of perfection in his route running. Mr.Steele told me he made his cuts like a surgeon. He took a measuring tape with him to practice to measure his distances from the sidelines or a particular point on the field. Staubach always knew where his #88 was....precisely. Drew never missed a game.
I remember watching a game in the early 90's when a very rare phenomenon occured. Michael Irvin dropped a pass at a critical stage of the game.
Nobody was more shocked than Irvin. He just sat there with both his hands up in the air, staring at them as if they were accomplices in a conspiracy. The announcer quipped that Irvin was scolding his hands for betraying him.
Irvin was once asked how he was able to be so reliable given the heat that Aikman could put on the ball. He said he had no choice, it was too late to get out of the way. He was fearless,driven, proud, and the hardest worker on the team. He could catch a ball with two defenders draped around him. Aikman could always depend on his #88.
Dez didn't care that his salary demands meant the team would have to part ways with good football players. He wasn't savvy enough to understand that, in the long run, you can make more money throughout your lifetime if you retired as a champion, with a Super Bowl ring. He could have recovered any amount he might have been willing to sacrifice in order to keep a few more of his teammates. I doubt that much of that past contract money is still available to him.
I think we know the direction the Cowboys are taking in this draft.
