Dez Bryant is on his way to becoming a highly sought after free agent sure to make big guaranteed money. Recent reports may hurt Bryant’s bargaining position, which were conveniently released right before his big foray into free agency. On Sunday, the NFL’s Ian Rapoport reported the following:
“I went to the DeSoto (Texas) City Police Department. I found six instances of police coming to Dez Bryant’s house — that’s where he lives, in DeSoto. Among the incidents — and none of these were convictions — there was a harassment incident, there was a robbery at his house, the fire department had to come and unlock his car that had a sleeping baby inside. All of these things give the Cowboys cause for concern. He’s had anger management; they have a manager with him at all times. But they are very nervous, and this is one reason they have not wanted to give him the guaranteed money that most elite receivers get.”
Sounds scary right? Six police incidents to Dez Bryant’s home. Whoa. How should the Cowboys or any other team trust him with the big guaranteed money Dez is asking for? I mean six incidents. Boo! Of course let’s take a few steps back off the ledge. Take a breath people. Our friends over at Deadspin dug a little deeper into these “incidents”.
The baby incident happened three years ago, and it’s pretty simple: Firefighters arrived and unlocked the car. In the call report, there’s no mention of a trip to the hospital or of any medical care, and Bryant’s name doesn’t appear anywhere. The harassment report is also from 2011. It involves someone calling and texting the cell phone of a person at Bryant’s address—Shariff reports that it was Bryant himself, though our docs have the name removed—saying, “We can make this work.” The cops note dully that the “RP”—reporting party—”advised that if the calls did not stop he would call back.”
Two reports, a burglary and a follow-up to a stolen vehicle, list other people’s names, which jibes with Shariff’s reporting that, per IRS records, Bryant might not have even lived at that address at the time of the incident. There’s also a report about the time Bryant hit his mom with a ball cap, but everyone knew about that already, and Rapoport didn’t even mention it. Shariff’s records show that one of the calls came from the neighborhood patrol. There’s no explanation or narrative at all.
These incidents seem to be a lot less dramatic. Yes, leaving a child in a locked car is a terrifying situation that luckily ended with no harm to the child, but was it malicious or just a mistake? Was Bryant even involved in the incident? It’s so easy to get the crowd to follow along with the narrative if you just throw in scary reports with no real context. This seems to be a campaign starting up to smear Dez. So who would have the most to gain by Dez Bryant being portrayed as a “dangerous” investment? The Cowboys would sure like to keep Bryant’s price at a reasonable range but if he hits the free agent market teams will be jumping over each other for the chance to throw money at the superstar receiver. What do you think? Is there a smear campaign being started against Dez Bryant?