To Carry the Pads, or Not to Carry the Pads

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous bloggery,

Or to take arms against a sea of traditions and end them...

So, Dez Bryant won't carry Roy Williams' pads.

While people are jumping in on both sides of the issue (which, by my unofficial count, stands at 100% For, 100% Against), there is another issue that no one has pointed out just yet:

Why Roy Williams?

It sez so right here that if Bryant had been made to carry Jason Witten's pads, or Miles Austin's, or perhaps Marcus Spears', there is no story, nothing to write, zero, zip, move on to Tony Romo's golf game.

But Roy Williams is suddenly taking it upon himself to make sure that the rookie is properly indoctrinated?

This was no accident.

No, this was specific.

Dez Bryant was drafted for one glaring, specific reason: to fill the void that Roy Williams created.

If Roy Williams had lived up to the hype that brought him to Dallas in the first place, there's no need to draft Dez Bryant. If Williams had been the legitimate Number 1 receiver that the Cowboys brought him in to be, Bryant slides into the second round to someone laughing all the way to the playoffs.

But Roy Williams stunk out loud, so much so that the Cowboys took a chance on third-stringer Miles Austin and "look what we found!"

This might have chapped Jerry Jones the most; here he'd been willing to move heaven and earth to find a receiver worthy of lining up where Michael Irvin once did, and, after giving the Lions way too much for way too little, found what he was looking for at the end of the bench. At that point, he knew that he would have to draft The Next Guy because The Last Guy was godawful.

And The Last Guy had been hearing about it and hearing about it for weeks and months leading up to the draft, at which point, to the surprise of no one with a pulse, the Cowboys traded up a couple of spots and took Dez Bryant.

(Uh oh.)

Then The Next Guy got his deal done specifically so that he could be at every practice.

(Oh crap.)

Then The Next Guy went out and played like Spider-man, catching everything in his grid square.

(Gotta put a stop to this...quick...)

"Hey, rook, carry my pads!"

(Please, oh please...)

"I was brought here to play football, not to carry pads."

Translation: "I was brought here to play football, not to carry YOUR pads."

Translation Subtitle: "Oh, by the way, Coach Phillips wants to see you, and he told me to tell you to bring your playbook."

(inarticulate strangling noise)

Simply put, this was Roy Williams trying to big-boy Dez Bryant, except that Bryant had already heard about Williams, and further knew that he was there to fill the hole that Williams had created.

Put another way, if this was the Corleone family, Dez Bryant is Michael and Roy Williams is Fredo.

I think we all know how this turns out...

Sources:

ProFootballTalk.com

ESPN.com