Was the Dez Bryant Trade Rumor Manufactured by ESPNDallas.com?
By Jason Lisk
The buzz in Dallas earlier this week was about trading last year’s first round pick, Dez Bryant. It originated with a radio segment featuring Bryan Broaddus, the official scout of 103.3 FM (who can break the film down like Obi-Wan Kenobi). Broaddus engaged in sports talk radio speculation (“just a thought”) about whether the Cowboys should trade rookie Dez Bryant for a Roy Williams-type package.
Colleague Calvin Watkins of ESPNDallas.com then went a step further and wrote a piece on whether the Cowboys should trade Dez Bryant. In it, he says that he talked to an unnamed team official, who said “I would think about it.” ESPN National Blogger Matt Mosley picked up on it as well. Colleage Tim MacMahon came in with “a dose of reality about dealing Dez Bryant.” A day later, Watkins wrote “[t]he Cowboys have no plans to trade Dez Bryant, but if someone calls asking them about him, of course they would talk about it.”
My favorite part of the piece speculating that Bryant should be traded:
"Is that [a first round pick] more important than Bryant? Maybe. After all, you won 11 games without him in 2009. With him, you lost 10 games and had a receiver who was late to meetings, didn’t know the playbook and had a few rants on the sideline."
That is so mind-numbing I can’t believe it passes for commentary. I mean, if Dez Bryant really cost the team five wins, I would give him away for a bag of balls. Bryant’s attitude and refusal to carry bags for Roy Williams was probably the reason that the safeties couldn’t cover a cough this season. Now that I think about it, Ronnie Lott was selected right after Bryant, probably a mistake by the Cowboys in retrospect.
Trading a first round pick who has shown he will likely become an impact player in one season for the next potential first round pick who hasn’t is not exactly brilliant. The median defensive player taken in the early half of the first round is a solid starter for 5-7 seasons, but no game changer: guys like Jeff Lageman or Stanley Richard or Chris Claiborne are the average expectation.
Is this the kind of stuff that the local ESPN website produces? Rumors turned into topics of conversation, turned into the story of the day, with multiple authors talking about various sides of an internally developed rumor, during the course of one day? If so, I’m glad there’s no ESPNFlyOverCountry.com.
[photo via Getty]