Michael Irvin covets Dez Bryant’s talent
By Mike Dyce
If you’re assigned the #88 jersey in Dallas it means you have a lot talent and the Dallas Cowboys have high expectations for you. Two members of the Cowboys Ring of Honor have worn #88: Drew Pearson and Michael Irvin. When the Cowboys traded up and drafted Dez Bryant and gave him the #88 he had big expectations bestowed upon him, and he’s been living up them lately.
Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas sat down with Michael Irvin who was at the Dallas Cowboys training camp and asked the NFL Hall of Famer if he had seen many receivers as gifted as Bryant.
“Not many. Not many in my whole life, period,” Irvin said, via ESPNDallas.com. “I ain’t talking about now, I’m talking about in my whole life that had that physical gift, that ability that he has to go up and catch any pass. He can catch any pass. The ability to run by people, the ability to catch a short ball and run around you, through you, however he needs to get there – he has that ability.
“He has the ability that when you see him, you go back in your prayer closet and you go, ‘God, why didn’t you give me that?’ Because I’ve said that: ‘God, if only you’d have given me that. Are you serious?’”
That led MacMahon to follow up with this question: “you think Bryant is more talented than you?”
“What do you mean? I look at him and say, that’s what I used to pray for. I used to pray for that! I used to pray, ‘Why didn’t you give me this?’ Absolutely!”
“What I was great at we can teach,” Irvin said. “We can teach thinking through the game, consistent route running. We can teach [that]. What he has, you can only hope and pray that God has blessed you with it. That’s the difference.”