There's no doubt that Dez Bryant will remain a member of the Dallas Cowboys once this current contract situation is all said and done.
The former first-round pick and college problem-child has turned himself into one of the most dominating and electrifying wide receivers in the entire NFL. In five professional seasons, Bryant has amassed 381 receptions for 5,424 yards and 56 touchdowns. He's also missed just five regular season games and has finished with over 1,200-yards each of the last four years.
In short, he's become everything the Cowboys and owners Jerry and Stephen Jones thought Bryant could be when they nabbed him with the 24th pick of the 2010 NFL Draft and it's unfathomable that they'd ever let him head elsewhere to make all those eye-popping, jaw-dropping plays.
Bryant, currently facing the proposition of playing under the franchise tag after completing his rookie contract last year, is staying away from offseason work as he looks to get a new deal. He seems to have taken something of a hardline stance toward negotiations in recent weeks, indicating that he was willing to sit out through Week 1 of the 2015 regular season if need be (though he did appear at a Cowboys minicamp session last week, but he didn't participate).
Bryant certainly deserves a new deal and it'd be insane to suggest the Cowboys don't want to reward him handsomely for his efforts thus far in his career. The numbers though, need to make sense, and according to the last report, that just isn't the case at the moment.
The younger Jones, appearing on SiriusXM NFL Radio recently, suggested that All Pro receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Calvin Johnson have deals which don't necessarily reflect the current wideout market and that Bryant's demands - likely something akin to Fitzgerald and Johnson, if you do a little between-the-lines-reading - have left the two sides with a "wide gap" to bridge.
"It's been well-documented that both Fitzgerald and Megatron both got their deals based on their rookie contracts because they were high draft picks and the franchise tag dictated that," Jones said, via the Cowboys team website. "But since then all receivers, the top ones, have pretty much been paid in the $11.5-12.5 million range, and there's a big disparity there.
"I don't think anyone quite knows what that market is, and that makes it difficult. I think once we figure out what that is, then there's a way for us to get something done with Dez. But until that happens, it's what teams think versus what players and their representatives think. There's a wide gap right now."
The wide receiver franchise tag will pay Bryant $12.8 million in 2015. If he and the team can't hammer out a long-term deal before July 15, Bryant's options are either to play under the franchise tag or not at all.
Contract talks are likely complicated by a couple of decisions made by Bryant this offseason - first, he changed representatives and joined the Jay-Z-led Roc Nation, a decision which reportedly did not sit well with the elder Jones.
Then, Bryant again sent a reportedly unhappy ripple through the Dallas organization when he fired long-time adviser - and babysitter - David Wells.
While there's simply no doubting that Bryant will play for the Cowboys or no one else for the foreseeable future, this is the kind of impasse which could seriously effect a relationship that is incredibly important to the overall success of the NFL's Dallas franchise if they're to vie for a Super Bowl in the Tony Romo era.
A lot of the hopes of Cowboys fans are currently pinned on Bryant and it's up to him to determine whether to allow this situation to impact him on the field next year or not, because from the sounds of it, it's simply unrealistic to think a deal will get done this offseason.
