Verdict
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 26,070
- Reaction score
- 20,265
https://www.si.com/eats/2018/06/13/cowboys-legend-dez-bryant-rookie-restaurant-bill
Just two days into his first training camp with the Cowboys in 2010, Dez Bryant made an enemy of another brash receiver, Roy Williams. After practice, Williams tried having the rookie Bryant carry his pads to the locker room—and Bryant refused. For years, veterans have had rookies carry their pads. It’s seen as an unwritten rule, an innocent hazing ritual, a small sign of respect. “I’m not doing it,” Bryant told reporters at the time. “I feel like I was drafted to play football, not carry another player’s pads.”
Williams, a seventh-year veteran, was not amused. He remembered back to when he was a rookie with the Lions in 2004, back when he had to buy sandwiches and donuts for the airplane, and all those times he almost missed the team flight because he had to stop at so many different restaurants to fulfill every player’s specific request. He remembered all those practices when he had to lug around the vets’ pads, too. “I was drafted number seven [overall]—I still had to do it,” Williams says now. “Larry Fitzgerald had to do it, and he was number three! It’s just an unwritten rule, man. You just had to do certain things. I always looked ahead and said, ‘When the next crop of guys come in, I’ll get to enjoy the donuts.’ ”
It didn't help that Bryant and Williams were both competing for a starting spot. Williams had been largely a disappointment in Dallas ever since the Cowboys traded for him two years earlier, and Bryant, the Cowboys’ first-round pick that year, had already emerged as a fan favorite in camp. He was making the big plays that fans had been expecting from Williams.
Rookie Dez Bryant and veteran Roy Williams at a padless practice, June 2010.
Even so, Williams says he pulled Bryant aside and tried to resolve Pads-gate peacefully, behind closed doors. “I tried explaining to the young man: ‘Hey, this is the easy part, everybody has to do it.’ ‘I’m not going to do that. Blah, blah, blah.’ O.K., no problem.”
When Williams spoke with reporters at the time, he said there was no issue between him and Bryant. “We talked about it. [Dez] wants to concentrate on football. We’re going to let him concentrate on football,” Williams said, according to ESPN. “But, when we go out to eat, I’m going to be a little bit more hungry, and a little bit more thirsty.”
Looking back on the situation, Dez has been some sort of issue from the time he arrived all the way up through, and after he left. The guy has some serious issues. It's too bad you couldn't transplant a real brain in Dez or do a whole head transplant on him.