Dallas Cowboys: Dez Bryant and Rookie Class of 2010 Suffer Most From Lockout

Dez Bryant’s rookie year had enough highlights for Dallas Cowboys fans to be excited about. But with a lockout looming over the players, the chances for him to make long strides towards a successful 2011 season have shortened.

If the NFL Players Association and the owners don’t come to an agreement by midnight tonight, the lockout will begin. The league will stop making payments on players’ salaries and bar them from showing up to their training facilities to work out or rehab.

Baltimore Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome said the players affected most will be the rookie class from 2010.

"I think the group that could get hurt the most by the work stoppage is last year's draft class on all 32 teams," Newsome told the Baltimore Sun. "Because this is where they get the opportunity to start from March to go all the way to Game 1, to work with coaches, to work with strength coaches and get themselves better and become better football players."

Dez Bryant is an example of a rookie that showed great promise last season, but will be affected negatively by the lockout. Currently, the wideout is rehabbing a fractured right ankle that he injured in Week 13 against the Indianapolis Colts. He’s been working with strength and conditioning coach Mike Woicik, who also helped Michael Irvin rehab his ACL injury in 1989.

But during a lockout, neither Woicik, nor anyone else from the Cowboys staff, can help Bryant rehab.

Players and coaches will see very little of each other during the lockout. Without a collective bargaining agreement, organized team activities and rehab sessions cannot take place.

The old adage, "If you feed a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day" comes to mind in this case. Hopefully the coaches taught Bryant how to fish so that he’ll be able to rehab on his own in the coming months.

Of course, you don’t NEED to have rehab coaches, but you also don’t need alcohol to have fun, it doesn’t mean it won't make it easier for you.  

For Dez Bryant, a second-year player who has yet to go through a full offseason with his teammates, the lockout can prevent him from making the progression that we’re used to seeing in second-year players.

With Jason Garrett’s playbook in hand, it’ll be up to him and his teammates to get together and train as a team without a coach with a clipboard screaming from a sideline.

Fellow Class of 2010 players like Sean Lee and Akwasi Owusu-Ansah are at a different disadvantage. Whereas Bryant has already spent a year in the offensive scheme, Lee and Owusu-Ansah will need to learn Rob Ryan’s scheme without the coach there to correct them, discuss situations, or help them in general.

Veterans like Roy Williams, Bradie James and Terrance Newman all know how to handle themselves through an offseason, and hopefully the 2010 rookie class will cling tightly to them.

If Bryant, Lee and the others can do that, then they’ll hopefully avoid the dreaded sophomore slump, whenever their sophomore season takes place.