Dez Bryant: Cowboys' Drew Pearson Right About Hyped Star Receiver

You look at second-year receiver Dez Bryant's freakish athleticism, combined with the numbers he puts up, and it's easy to call him the next superstar of the Dallas Cowboys.

But recent Ring of Honor inductee Drew Pearson, who has seen Bryant don his No. 88, thinks Bryant has much more to prove before he's crowned, and he's dead on.

Football is about more than numbers. It's about more then an electric play here and there. It's about more than flashes in the pan.

The truly great receivers understand a perfectly run route is just as important as stumbling into a route and making up for it with one's athleticism. The truly great receivers understand that consistency is key. The truly great receivers understand that you aren't truly great unless you show up in the fourth quarter and pivotal moments of the game.

Bryant has yet to learn this and already his freakishly athletic moves have duped us all.

Said Pearson, via Pro Football Talk:

“The first quarter was spectacular. Great job, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. But now we need you in the fourth quarter and you can’t even run? You catch three passes in the first quarter and then you get targeted five times after that and you don’t make any catches? . . . Let’s not be so high on this guy who hasn’t really done anything. He missed four games last season, he comes in this game and he can’t finish it out.”

Well, I think we could have done without the "nah, nah, nah, nah, nah," but everything else Pearson said was on point.

Bryant caught three passes for 71 yards in the first quarter alone on Sunday at the New York Jets. Then he disappeared. You could make the excuse that Bryant was coming off an injury, but that would just be covering up the fact that he simply didn't play well the rest of the game.

Pearson also highlighted Bryant's route running, or lack thereof:

“Dez’s first move was a jump, a hop-step. What is that? That’s one second gone from the pass route. I mean, what is that? Come on. . . . Yeah, he’s raw. He’s a monster. That’s what monsters do, I guess. You see that in high school kids running routes like that.”

And perhaps that's the best description of Bryant: He's a monster, but he's raw.

Until Bryant irons out the intricacies of the game and understands what it takes to be a truly great receiver, he will be an inconsistent star.

An inconsistent star doesn't help you much when the game's on the line in the fourth quarter.