Comments from Dallas Cowboys executive Stephen Jones were presented by a media outlet to make Dez Bryant look bad, leading to major headlines and some fallout on Friday.
Jones joined SiriusXM NFL Radio from Cowboys camp and talked about Dak Prescott’s development. Jones said that he thought not having Dez Bryant and Jason Witten in his ear would help Prescott. Unfortunately, when SiriusXM NFL Radio tweeted the quote, they left out that Jones mentioned Witten as well. Leaving Witten out made it seem like Jones was singling out Bryant as being detrimental to Prescott.
The original tweet said “Dak is working on his game and accuracy. He has to trust the system. I think that was tough last year with Dez Bryant in his ear. I think he’ll have the year he had last year if not better.”
They even tagged Bryant in the tweet so he would know about it. And guess what? Bryant responded and went on a huge rant where he trashed Sean Lee among others.
They eventually deleted the tweet and replaced it with the actual quote from Stephen Jones. The quote was, “He’s gotta trust the system, which at times last year, there was some pressure … with Dez in his ear and to some degree Jason in his ear. Those great players want the ball.”
The second tweet, which contains the full quote, is much less inflammatory and points out that great players like Bryant and Witten want the ball. It doesn’t single out Dez.
You want a quick media lesson? Sirius XM wanted a story to go viral so they intentionally left off "Jason Witten" part of Stephen Jones' quote, because with just Dez it is more inflammatory, now that they got Dez fired up, they dropping the FULL Quote to make Dez look crazy pic.twitter.com/NnXMqY8xcD
— Robert Littal (@BSO) July 27, 2018
Should Bryant have gone off in response the way he did? No, which is part of the reason why Lee calls him out for a lack of accountability. But he certainly had a legitimate gripe with the media outlet for trying to make him look worse than deserved.
