Dez Bryant Happy, “But I'm Not Satisfied”

Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant declared this week that if anything, signing a five-year, $70 million deal just before training camp will motivate him to work harder--not only to justify the team’s apparent trust in him, but also because, while the money is certainly nice, the goal for Bryant is still to be the best player he can be.

“Who wouldn’t be happy? Of course I’m happy. But I’m not satisfied,” Bryant said, per the team’s official website. “I’m not saying that I’m not satisfied with what I got. I think it just makes me want to go harder, become a better player. I always feel like I never have it. I think that’s another reason why I do the things that I do, because I always feel like you can always be better.

“I always want to be a better player.”

After missing offseason workouts to lobby for the aforementioned deal, the plan was to ease Bryant into action at camp. That was going fine, but then Bryant suffered a hamstring injury. The Cowboys went the cautious route with Bryant, for obvious reasons, and he never appeared in the preseason.

But Bryant isn’t all that worried about the lost time, thanks in great part to the rapport he’s developed with Tony Romo over the past five years.

“I think the good thing with Tony and I is we know each other very well. We have a great relationship off the field,” Bryant said. “I think when you have that, that’s the best thing that you can ever have--I’m talking amongst players. Things become naturally easy whenever you have that kind of relationship. Me being gone, I wasn’t too frustrated, Romo wasn’t too frustrated. I jumped back in and we did what we normally do.”