The entire NFL landscape acknowledges and concludes that Dez is a limited and poor route runner. Combine that with declining speed, a route tree and limited offensive scheme that pidgeon holes him to predictable routes and you have the perfect recipe for a bomb in production. Then sprinkle in a new QB that is uncomfortable throwing to reciever that arent open and you have the entire pie.
Its NOT rocket science here. Plain as day.
Now Dez had a better connection with Romo but that was years ago. And Romo isnt here anymore. Dak is here and he is our guy. And if he doesnt have a connection with the waning Dez, then no sense in paying an over the hill guy 17 million dollars. Time to make the offense "Dak friendly".
The post you quoted was
not a defense of Dez Bryant.
During the season, some people tried to explain the drop in Bryant's production by claiming that too many of his targets weren't catchable. If they'd looked around the league, they'd have seen that Dez's rate of catchable targets was slightly above average for an outside WR. The problem is that not all of a player's catchable targets are actually caught. Dez's production went down because his drop rate was so high, and his TD rate wasn't what it was in previous seasons, including his only other season with Prescott.
2014 Romo
to Bryant 92 of 132 (69.7%) 1391 yd (10.5 ypa) 15 td 5 int
126.2
to everybody else 246 of 353 (69.7%) 2798 yd (7.9 ypa) 23 td 4 int
110.2
2016 Prescott
to Bryant 59 of 110 (53.6%) 928 yd (8.4 ypa) 10 td 3 int
100.9
to everybody else 276 of 387 (71.3%) 3041 yd (7.9 ypa) 16 td 2 int
105.8
2017 Prescott (all games)
to Bryant 68 of 131 (51.9%) 830 yd (6.3 ypa) 6 td 5 td
71.1
to everybody else 240 of 359 (66.9%) 2494 yd (6.9 ypa) 16 td 8 int
92.3
2017 Prescott (w/ all 5 starting OL)
to Bryant 48 of 86 (55.8%) 632 yd (7.3 ypa) 6 td 3 int
87.9
to everybody else 164 of 252 (65.1%) 1832 yd (7.3 ypa) 15 td 3 int
101.4