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Guest
By JENNIFER FLOYD ENGEL
jenfloyd@star-telegram.com
SAN ANTONIO — The good people at CBS 11 asked me to weigh in on the biggest question of Camp Cowboy to date: How long until Dez Bryant supplants Roy Williams as the starter?
And I'll tell you exactly what I told them.
Did you watch practice?
Already has.
It is just a matter of how long it takes Coach Wade to note the obvious in the starting lineup. This is not meant as a rip, merely a nod to recent history, where weeks were frittered away before Miles Austin was unleashed. And what Dez flashed Saturday suggests a slightly naughtier version of anything Austin displayed a year ago.
The rookie caught everything in his vicinity on Day 1, with his vicinity being his ankles to far above him. The one-handed catches, plural, along the sideline, were electrifying. His little legs were flying down the field, leaving a wake of gaping jaws.
"God gave him some ability," linebacker Bradie James said.
And yet the most impressive thing Dez did was be at training camp to do any of this.
You probably heard, because everyone was saying so, that Dez would for sure be a holdout. Dez had a rep for always being late at Oklahoma State, and questions about his judgment surfaced based on the whole NCAA brouhaha that cost him most of his last collegiate season, and his agent was Eugene Parker, who spearheaded Michael Crabtree signing in San Francisco just in time for Halloween a year ago.
Many were waiting for Dez to prove the fog of doubt surrounding him was justified. What he did instead was chip away at every single question about him, his character and whatever else caused him to plummet well below his talent level in the draft, by signing early and arriving early.
"I just wanted him to know I am here to play," Dez said. "I am here to do whatever they ask me to do. I'm here to work hard, give 100 percent, give my 'A' game. I feel like that is the message I sent Mr. Jones."
Dez said he stepped onto the turf at the Alamodome almost two hours early, deliberately so, to send a message to Owner Jones and teammates and fans and anybody watching about exactly what kind of guy he is, just in case any of the rumors had left anybody confused.
Because as former President John F. Kennedy once noted, "the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." And such is the case with Dez.
Most of the knocks on him were innuendo, the things that are whispered and hard to put into words, about the kinds of plays Oklahoma State had to run with him, and about his work ethic and about his judgment, and about his habit of being late and about his friendship with Deion. It was not that he is a bad guy or a bad player, hardly. It was just a little risky, thus why he fell to a place in the draft where the Cowboys could go get him.
"We obviously loved him as a player," offensive coordinator Jason Garrett said. "We were very comfortable with him as a person. We liked him. He's a good young man."
And then he said what most of us had been thinking.
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07...#ixzz0uhWd5YRv
jenfloyd@star-telegram.com
SAN ANTONIO — The good people at CBS 11 asked me to weigh in on the biggest question of Camp Cowboy to date: How long until Dez Bryant supplants Roy Williams as the starter?
And I'll tell you exactly what I told them.
Did you watch practice?
Already has.
It is just a matter of how long it takes Coach Wade to note the obvious in the starting lineup. This is not meant as a rip, merely a nod to recent history, where weeks were frittered away before Miles Austin was unleashed. And what Dez flashed Saturday suggests a slightly naughtier version of anything Austin displayed a year ago.
The rookie caught everything in his vicinity on Day 1, with his vicinity being his ankles to far above him. The one-handed catches, plural, along the sideline, were electrifying. His little legs were flying down the field, leaving a wake of gaping jaws.
"God gave him some ability," linebacker Bradie James said.
And yet the most impressive thing Dez did was be at training camp to do any of this.
You probably heard, because everyone was saying so, that Dez would for sure be a holdout. Dez had a rep for always being late at Oklahoma State, and questions about his judgment surfaced based on the whole NCAA brouhaha that cost him most of his last collegiate season, and his agent was Eugene Parker, who spearheaded Michael Crabtree signing in San Francisco just in time for Halloween a year ago.
Many were waiting for Dez to prove the fog of doubt surrounding him was justified. What he did instead was chip away at every single question about him, his character and whatever else caused him to plummet well below his talent level in the draft, by signing early and arriving early.
"I just wanted him to know I am here to play," Dez said. "I am here to do whatever they ask me to do. I'm here to work hard, give 100 percent, give my 'A' game. I feel like that is the message I sent Mr. Jones."
Dez said he stepped onto the turf at the Alamodome almost two hours early, deliberately so, to send a message to Owner Jones and teammates and fans and anybody watching about exactly what kind of guy he is, just in case any of the rumors had left anybody confused.
Because as former President John F. Kennedy once noted, "the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." And such is the case with Dez.
Most of the knocks on him were innuendo, the things that are whispered and hard to put into words, about the kinds of plays Oklahoma State had to run with him, and about his work ethic and about his judgment, and about his habit of being late and about his friendship with Deion. It was not that he is a bad guy or a bad player, hardly. It was just a little risky, thus why he fell to a place in the draft where the Cowboys could go get him.
"We obviously loved him as a player," offensive coordinator Jason Garrett said. "We were very comfortable with him as a person. We liked him. He's a good young man."
And then he said what most of us had been thinking.
Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07...#ixzz0uhWd5YRv