The question of Dez Bryant’s future in Dallas is still up in the air. Jerry Jones said that he and the star WR are going to talk, but a meeting hasn’t been set up yet. According to the owner of Big D franchise, all will be known in the next week or so.
During an interview after the NFL owners meeting, last Tuesday, Jones stated: “Obviously we’ll get on point relative to this offseason, coming year, his health, how he’s doing, how he feels about his conditioning, working out, all of those kinds of things. Certainly, we’ll talk about our business.”
Bryant is set to earn $12.5 million in 2018 if he stays in Dallas. This amount makes him one of the best-paid receivers in the league. What’s even more significant is that his salary’s hit on the cap stands at $16.5 million. So talks about the pay cut are imminent, we simply don’t know how Bryant will react to the proposal. When 2017 season ended he was asked about possible reduction; he said that’s not an option.
In the meantime, Cowboys signed two wide receiver free agents. Allen Hurns and Deonte Thompson are now officially Dallas Cowboys players. But, same as Jason Garrett and Stephen Jones before him, Jerry confirmed that these signing wouldn’t impact Dez Bryant’s future. He stated: “I think that these two guys that we signed and what we might look at in the draft, at any level of the draft, plus what we might get worked out with Dez, gives us a good-looking receiver outlook.”
But the money might become an issue. Cowboys have $30 million tied up in their receiving corps. They currently have Bryant, Hurns, Thompson, Cole Beasley, Terrance Williams, Ryan Switzer, and Noah Brown under contract.
This much money in receiving corps is not the best way to build a roster, and Jones knows it: “You can do that, but it’ll cost you other places, with other positions. We’re not in a position to not have to allocate. And so if we did something like you just outlined, we’d have to make do but maybe uncomfortably in some other places … The question is: Can you do it? Yes, you can do it, but when you look at it may be the wrong allocation of the resources to help you win.”
Whatever the case might be Jones and Bryant are bound to meet soon. Dallas franchise owner said that the issue here was the lack of time for a meeting, not their choice to delay Bryant decision. Here is his statement “As you know, Dez is really passionate and the most passionate thing that I find over the years with him is about football, about the Cowboys, team, and so that is really where we spend a lot of our time talking. I expect it to be a really straightforward, candid. I have a lot of respect for him, and I know he does for me. And we’ve had really the occasion to have had many talks over his time with the Cowboys that were times when you could even call them awkward, but the two of us haven’t had any awkward moments.”
