Here are quotes from Jerry Jones and Wade Phillips on their pick of Dez Bryant and how everything went down.
How did the deal go down?
Jerry Jones: We were keeping a close eye one who was ahead of us, keeping a close eye on the number of picks ahead of us. We knew he was high on a lot of draft boards. He was high on ours of course. We had anticipated, we had rehearsed, gone over our strategy, gone over when and what and how much we would offer at various junctures coming down the board. This is something along the old adage of when the coach tells you to see the ball before it’s hit; make the play on it before it’s hit. We saw it coming so we didn’t have to hesitate or be apprehensive about it. We felt pretty strongly that we should go on in there and get him when we did. It was something we were able to execute pretty good.
Was this your target all along?
Jerry Jones: We had three players that we thought were of exceptional talent. He was certainly one of those three and as we moved down, the other two were taken. We had gone through all the scenarios of our numbers, numbers of receivers, where we are with our numbers of receivers, what he adds to the mix. Of course he’s an outstanding punt returner and we had that very much in the mix. When you say ‘a player you wanted all along’ I really don’t want to be there as much as I would tell you it was pretty ambitious to think that for the price we paid at the 27th pick we could end up with Dez Bryant. It’s pretty ambitious to think that’s how we planned it all along. We’d hoped that it would go pretty good. My wife was out of town and she said, ‘While I’m watching it, tell me which players need to have been picked there for me to jump up and holler “How ‘bout them Cowboys.’” He was certainly one of the two or three that we mentioned.
You had mentioned that the first round draft pick starts. I’m assuming that’s with Dez.
Jerry Jones: Yes. In other words, you’re going to ask me if Roy starts, I’m going to say yes. Does Miles start, I’m going to say yes. From my perspective, we’ll let coach, he’s going to ultimately put them out there. We’ll let him answer that too.
Wade Phillips: We discussed all this going into the draft. Certainly, each position and what our need was. Like Jerry said we really had three guys that were quality football players. At the right circumstances we could get one of those guys. We were able to get this one. This kid is a returner also, and he’s an outstanding returner. He played as a sophomore and had 87 catches, 19 touchdowns. He had like four touchdowns as a sophomore. This last year, he played in only three games and had four touchdowns and returned another one. He’s scored at least a touchdown every game he’s played in the last however many games that is, 16. We thought this guy could make a difference. He’s a playmaker.
How does he impact Roy Williams’ role on the team, or does it?
Jerry Jones: I think it’s quite a group of receivers.
Wade Phillips: That’s our job to get him the football. I do think he’ll come in and return pretty quickly. sometimes it takes young receivers, we’ve seen it throughout time, it takes young receivers a little bit to get going so to speak and get used to pro football and get their feet wet. We’ve seen a lot of them come in and be returners and made an impact real quick. There’s a chance he’ll do that.
It doesn’t affect your decision to move Roy?
Jerry Jones: No, it does not. We won’t be moving Roy. The other thing I’ll say is that he was outstanding when we visited here. We know him well, and we’ve spent, as we should, we spent a lot of time evaluating him and understanding his circumstances. His proximity to us here really enhanced our ability to evaluate him and look at all the nuisances involved. He came in and was outstanding with all our coaches here and was really impressive. We hoped that he is through some of what Wade alluded to – some of those early things you have to do to develop a receiver. He’s absolutely right. It can sometimes take longer than a season to get one ready to play. We drafted him with the idea of him being on the field immediately, certainly as a punt returner, but earlier there with our offense.
Did your feelings earlier of passing on Randy Moss affect you at all in not letting a receiver of this quality pass you by again?
Jerry Jones: It did not. There’s been more written there than I’ve said about that. That’s not to back away from anything that’s been written. Dez Bryant stands on his own. His production stands on its own. His abilities, some of his unique abilities – the run after catch – all of those things stand on their own. I didn’t need the encouragement of the revisit of the Randy Moss decision or anything I regretted there to get us to this point with Dez Bryant.
Did you or Ray Sherman or anyone on your staff call Roy Williams and tell him you’re taking a receiver or does it affect your view of him?
Wade Phillips: No. I talked to the team this week about the guys we were counting on were the guys on our team. The players are all working out, I got them all together and told them the draft comes up every year, there’s always competition, but I’m counting on you guys. I’m counting on you guys to make a difference on this football team. If someone comes in to compete, that’s part of the game. Don’t get your feelings hurt no matter who we take. I even kidded with Romo and told him if we take a quarterback, you have to smile and go on. That’s true if there would’ve been a quarterback there with that value. I explained that to the team, and I think they understood that. All of them were there.
Does Roy have to earn his time on the field this spring and summer?
Wade Phillips: He’s out here every day throwing. That’s exactly what I told them. We are counting on those guys to come through for us.
On where Bryant stands as far as his maturity goes:
Jerry Jones: I knew him well enough to, without being trite here and not let words show that, but we wouldn’t have drafted him if we hadn’t felt good that he could be now and a real significant player for the Cowboys. And I do mean the word significant because he does have that potential. I think you weigh all of that. We had him as one of the top graded players that we’ve got, and everything figured into the grades, and he was one of the top players. I know firsthand he’s one of the top players around the league with everything figured into the grade too, but we thought maybe the circumstances may give us a shot.
On how much misinformation was out there about Bryant?
Jerry Jones: What I’d like to do – and you’ve got the right word – but it really is an evaluation. Like you said, there’s really some good information there. Really good input from where he’s lived and where he’s gone to school. There’s great information out here. That doesn’t mean every bit of it was A-plus on a measurement information, but there was real good information and it got very consistent. The more people we talked to, the more people he’d been around, it really came in there with the consistency that we feel like we know him. Maybe sometimes you don’t feel compelled to do and go to those lengths to delve into that, but we did and we wanted to. The reason all along is that we thought he could potentially bring that kind of dimension to our team, and to our offense and to our return game – punt return – but certainly to the team itself. I’m convinced that relative to the other players on the board from a talent standpoint, from the ability that given, being on the field and given competing that he has a chance to be a game changer.
Does this move take the pressure off of Roy Williams?
Jerry Jones: I think that it should show that we really want to, when given the opportunity, we want to create as much offense as we can, and this is the time. We’ve got an outstanding quarterback in our mind. We’ve got outstanding running backs. We’ve got a chance to have some depth at tight end. We’ve got a plan on our offensive line that is a good one, I think, that can be satisfactory to us if we didn’t draft the outstanding offensive lineman. If we didn’t do that, we’ve got a plan there that makes it comfortable for us to go and make this pick at receiver. We’ve certainly not forgotten about the needs at offensive line. When I say needs, where we don’t have the number of players. So all of that was mixed in with this thing. I want to emphasize the amount of time that we spent on this very issue with our numbers with Miles (Austin), with Roy (Williams), with (Kevin) Ogletree, with (Patrick) Crayton, with (Sam) Hurd, with our young players that are sitting there. That combination of things, with all of that considered, he was a big positive for our offense.
What were the risks in your mind with the pick after doing all of your homework:
Jerry Jones: I think that probably we mitigated a lot of the risk in the pick to some degree by getting to get him where we got him as opposed to where we had him graded. We felt all along that you can mitigate that risk the lower you go in the first round. That’s one thing. Secondly, I think that the issues we won’t to address and he should address are not the kinds of issues that really cause me to jump back: substance, work ethic, his ability “get it” – in terms of his mental playing ability. All of those things were not in any way… all of those things were pluses. It is documented that there certainly are some things that are there that if not would cause him to be… argue ably we have had people say that he is the best player in the draft, say that, we didn’t have him rated as the best player in the draft, but I’m saying with that kind of talent there. That gives us - the Cowboys – me; we all have a great incentive and a huge reason to really make this work. And I think we should have that for all 53 on our roster, but we have a big incentive to make this work. And what this can bring to our offense is worth, however what maintenance we have here. The other thing, I really do believe and I really do believe in this philosophy, but I believe that he should look at tonight as history and the past and beginning in the morning when he gets here he should absolutely say this is a new life for me, a new slate, I am in the NFL, I’m Dallas Cowboys, I have a lot of God given ability and really approach it from that stand point and not spend a lot of his energy one way or the other thinking about the past. And I think he has a chance to do that.
Would it be correct to say that somebody (other WR) is going to lose playing time:
Wade Phillips: Well we will see how that plays out. Well you can play four wide receivers, you don’t have to play three and that is my job, that’s what I have to do, to get the ball to the best players. And that is what we are going to try to do.”
Jones: “And I am going to add something to that. People get nicked up. So you may have five receivers but you may have two of them or one of them that may not be at their top speed that week or those weeks and all of that depth there, especially depth there with that kind of talent. If you want to put together a team that is a huge assest.”
Phillips: “If you remember there Miles was hurt until the fourth game so you need good players at any position, but at wide receiver it was very important for us.
Taking a wide receiver unlikely – was that smoke screen:
Jerry Jones: No not really, it was unlikely. With our evaluation and his talent level, you had to have things going for you to get him down right at the 27 so we could up to the 24. We didn’t have the fire power, we didn’t have the rational to get up there in the top 10 where his grades are.
Was he in the top five:
Jerry Jones: I am not going to go there, but I’ll go as far to tell you the top 10.
Was that why you guys were so excited when he started dropping – we saw you on the war cam?
Jerry Jones: I don’t know how much of that you were seeing but someone else said we noticed there about five and six away, we noticed that that thing got to twitching, getting nervous and everybody started getting fidgety, talking in tongues and all that. So the whole thing started heating up when we saw striking distance. What’s striking distance? Striking is when you can give a three and get back a four and have it happen for you. So yes, it started getting nervous then. And it was again probably some wasted energy if you started getting nervous at six – had a lot to go there.
Were you nervous when Denver came up two spots before you?
Jerry Jones: There were a couple teams and we made the trade to try to avoid a couple of teams.
Were you surprised you didn’t have to give up more?
Jerry Jones: No, not really. That was a reasonable thing and a reasonable consideration. It fit us. Our issue was on moving up at all, we just couldn’t even though we saw at least three players there that we were real serious difference makers for us now - much less in the future. We didn’t want to give that two up and for a long time it took that two. And for a long time the two didn’t get it. So we had pushed back and were reluctant to go there. When we started getting over into a three, kick back a four, those kind of points, then that’s when the twitching starts.
Would say a misevaluation by other teams caused him to fall?
Jerry Jones: No I would tell you that a combination of his story, of him not playing his senior year. I think those impacted where he played in the draft, and I may sound trite, but not naïve, because I know it impacted where he was taken because he is a better player than that.
Talk about the consistent things you found out about him:
Jerry Jones: Good person, good person, conscientious; those kinds of things. Really in close people that have a lot of credibility but arms length enough to have some credibility. As I mentioned earlier, so much of that in depth evaluation that wasn’t there that made a difference to me. Everybody has a lot of work to do and his starts tomorrow, all of ours starts tomorrow. The price is a big one here.
Concerns of punctuality:
Jerry Jones: Yes, the concerns are we can’t start our meetings over around here for him. Those ball games start at a certain time, kidding.
Clarence E. Hill Jr.
Clarence E. Hill, Jr.
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