erod
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We misread the whole thing. It's staggering the bandwidth we dedicated to the Dez Bryant negotiations, 99 percent of which wasn't focused on the matter truly at hand. It was like watching Sixth Sense for the first time; it was right in front of us all along, but we just didn't see it.
The consequences at stake weren't really about Dez at all. They weren't really even about football. Reflecting back, signing Dez really wasn't optional, and I think both parties involved knew it. We didn't, nor did the frothing media.
Our eyes were transfixed on Dez'; brilliance as a transcendent player. But that wasn't the commodity on the table.
The magnitude of Dez wasn't about 16 touchdowns. If a certain running back could finish runs, Dez might have had single digits in that category. It wasn't the target he gives Romo. Good quarterbacks can rack up stats with far lesser receivers than Dez, as shown in a Super Bowl of nobody wideouts. And it wasn't the unbridled and infectious passion that Dez bathes the sideline in each and every Sunday. Great pro teams often don't need that.
No, the reason that Jerry and Stephen hip-hopped on that plane to ROC Nation had everything to do with you, me, and a million questions from a vagabond tribe of opportunistic misfits knows as the national media. It was a gift for the other 52 players on the Cowboys roster, not just a reward for Dez.
Even more than that, the stroke of that pen sterilized training camp, uncluttered the inviting path ahead, and proved that the Cowboys newfound love for financial smarts doesn't mean that an all-in player can't still get paid even if he's not a quarterback. That, along with a bouquet of sanity for the coming preparation.
Squelched now are the redundant questions that would have bogged down camp. "Have you talked to Dez?"; "Do you think Dez will really miss the Giants game?"; "What does Dez absence mean to this team?"; "Do you think this team can win without Dez?"; "Do you think Dez would already have been signed if he caught that ball?"
Dez, Dez, and more Dez.
It could have ruined everything. True, teams sometimes rally around such cataclysms, but this threatened to grate this team's patience into raw hamburger meat. Especially, after the unceremonious "no, thank you" they saw DeMarco Murray get from the Cowboy brass just flicker ago.
A contaminated Oxnard would have sent the national media paste-eaters into a Trekkie frenzy. It would have ladled every Sports Center and NFL Network opening segment in Dezzy gravy. Jason Garrett would have had to throttle into def-con 5 robot mode to manage the insanity.
And the rules as they are now, by then, there wouldn't have been a single thing Jerry and Stephen could have done to fix it. It would have to wait until February, the price would have virtually doubled, and most importantly, the 2015 season could have been lost in the backwash. That July 15th deadline normally plays in the owner's favor, but not here. It was Dez' hammer this time.
These are the kind of considerations that I don't think we paid close enough attention to. I certainly didn't. Playing a year at $12.8 million, more than what Dez had earned his career to date, was compensation enough to get us to more talks next offseason, I thought. And in a normal world with normal people, it would be. But the loonies to the northeast and on TV hardly fit "normal".
What the Joneses did had less to do with football than it did feel. Doesn't everything just feel better now?
Yes, yes it does.
The consequences at stake weren't really about Dez at all. They weren't really even about football. Reflecting back, signing Dez really wasn't optional, and I think both parties involved knew it. We didn't, nor did the frothing media.
Our eyes were transfixed on Dez'; brilliance as a transcendent player. But that wasn't the commodity on the table.
The magnitude of Dez wasn't about 16 touchdowns. If a certain running back could finish runs, Dez might have had single digits in that category. It wasn't the target he gives Romo. Good quarterbacks can rack up stats with far lesser receivers than Dez, as shown in a Super Bowl of nobody wideouts. And it wasn't the unbridled and infectious passion that Dez bathes the sideline in each and every Sunday. Great pro teams often don't need that.
No, the reason that Jerry and Stephen hip-hopped on that plane to ROC Nation had everything to do with you, me, and a million questions from a vagabond tribe of opportunistic misfits knows as the national media. It was a gift for the other 52 players on the Cowboys roster, not just a reward for Dez.
Even more than that, the stroke of that pen sterilized training camp, uncluttered the inviting path ahead, and proved that the Cowboys newfound love for financial smarts doesn't mean that an all-in player can't still get paid even if he's not a quarterback. That, along with a bouquet of sanity for the coming preparation.
Squelched now are the redundant questions that would have bogged down camp. "Have you talked to Dez?"; "Do you think Dez will really miss the Giants game?"; "What does Dez absence mean to this team?"; "Do you think this team can win without Dez?"; "Do you think Dez would already have been signed if he caught that ball?"
Dez, Dez, and more Dez.
It could have ruined everything. True, teams sometimes rally around such cataclysms, but this threatened to grate this team's patience into raw hamburger meat. Especially, after the unceremonious "no, thank you" they saw DeMarco Murray get from the Cowboy brass just flicker ago.
A contaminated Oxnard would have sent the national media paste-eaters into a Trekkie frenzy. It would have ladled every Sports Center and NFL Network opening segment in Dezzy gravy. Jason Garrett would have had to throttle into def-con 5 robot mode to manage the insanity.
And the rules as they are now, by then, there wouldn't have been a single thing Jerry and Stephen could have done to fix it. It would have to wait until February, the price would have virtually doubled, and most importantly, the 2015 season could have been lost in the backwash. That July 15th deadline normally plays in the owner's favor, but not here. It was Dez' hammer this time.
These are the kind of considerations that I don't think we paid close enough attention to. I certainly didn't. Playing a year at $12.8 million, more than what Dez had earned his career to date, was compensation enough to get us to more talks next offseason, I thought. And in a normal world with normal people, it would be. But the loonies to the northeast and on TV hardly fit "normal".
What the Joneses did had less to do with football than it did feel. Doesn't everything just feel better now?
Yes, yes it does.
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