He still thinks he caught it. A lot of people do.
But Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant desperately tried to leave his 2014 playoff was-it-or-wasn’t-it reception in the past, with a familiar foe coming in Sunday.
“Hey, man, we’re not going to talk about the catch,” Bryant said, via Clarence Hill of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Nah, we’re not going to talk about the catch. Yeah, of course, it was tough. It was heartbreaking. It ended our season.”
Of course, he talked about the catch for another 30 minutes, because of the confluence of events that has brought him to this week — the same opponent, the same round of the playoffs, and with NFL officials seemingly no clearer on what is and is a catch than they were that day.
But Bryant’s determined to not have it matter Sunday.
“No. I don’t even care,” Bryant said. “That was 2014. There’s no extra motivation. There’s no nothing. If there’s any motivation it’s just to prepare better than the last time. I feel like I’ve done that. . . .
“Everywhere I go, I still hear it until this day, ‘It was a catch. It was a catch.’ Still to this day they be like, ‘It’s January blah, blah, blah, 2017, 3:29 p.m. and I just want the world to know that Dez Bryant still caught it.’ It’s funny.”
He’s able to laugh about it now, but unless he reels in a similar play this weekend, that legend will live with him as one of the greatest plays that never was.
