After the Dallas Cowboys’ 13-12 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, wide receiver Dez Bryant had a locker room outburst and later took to Twitter to defend himself over an allegation that he taunted Seahawks wide receiver Ricardo Lockette, while Lockette laid motion less on the field from a hit by Cowboys safety Jeff Heath. Hall of Famer and NFL on FOX analyst, Troy Aikman, who called the game on Sunday, took up for Bryant on The Jim Rome Show.
“I couldn’t hear what was being said. I can’t imagine the guy that I know that he would have been out there, you know, celebrating the injury or taunting the Seattle players,” Aikman said.
The three-time Super Bowl champion says those watching shouldn’t come to a conclusion over Bryant’s body language.
“I saw Dez. He’s an emotional guy, he’s very expressive when he’s on the field and when he’s on the sideline,” Aikman said. “There’s been a number of times when he’s been on the sidelines and he’s been reacting to something or saying something and his body language and the way in which he’s saying it, you read into that and it’s not anything what you think that it is. So guys learn over the years in covering him that a lot of times, what you think he’s doing really isn’t what he’s doing at all. I don’t think for a minute, I don’t claim to know Dez that well but I have sat down and visited with him, he’s a harmless guy, and he’s really a good person. He wishes no ill will on anyone, I can assure you of that.”
After another tough week around the NFL with big name injuries, Aikman was asked if he felt the game is more violent now or when he was playing.
“I don’t think it’s more violent,” Aikman said. “I think that with the new Collective Bargaining Agreement the players aren’t as available to the coaches and the training staff in the off-season as we once were, and I don’t think the players come in as good of shape, which is surprising in some regard, because they all have personal trainers. They all go off to these various locations in the off-season, but it seems that when they come back a lot of soft-tissue injuries, it’s more so than when I played.”
Aikman feels the last time the league and NFLPA sat down to negotiate their deal, the players were more focused on extending their careers by not practicing as much but that may be causing more injuries now.
“I really think that when they were negotiating the Collective Bargaining Agreement that if the players had said, ‘You know what owners, we are going to give you all of the financial concessions,’ which they ultimately did anyway,” Aikman said. “But the players, who a lot of veteran players were on those committees that were in the middle of the negotiations, so they were looking at longevity and trying to further their careers, and saying we want to reduce the amount time and the amount of contact during the week, but if the players had said we’re going to practice one day a week, and hypothetically, I mean, even though it may be more valid than I give it credit for, if the players would have said ‘We’re not going to practice at all during the week, we’re going to give you all financial concessions, we’re going to show up and we’re going to play on Sunday, how’s that work?’ I think the owners, there’s a part of me that thinks they would have said, ‘ok, great.’ The coaches wouldn’t have liked it, but what’s happened with this is, I don’t think the fundamentals of football aren’t as good. I don’t think the execution overall is as good. We certainly see tackling being a problem. There’s not as much contact during the week, and then guys are getting injured more, I know some of the injuries that you speak of are not soft-tissue, but a lot of them are.”
