IRVING, Texas – Dez Bryant had a game you would think he'd try to forget the last time the Dallas Cowboys played the Chicago Bears.
But the poor showing during last season's 34-18 Monday night loss is something the Cowboys wide receiver hasn't forgotten. It actually served as a significant eye-opener.
"I had to get on top of my [stuff]," Bryant said Thursday. "That's what I had to do. Obviously there were some things there that I needed to clean up, sharpen up on my end."
Bryant had eight catches for 105 yards on 13 targets. But he had two critical second-half drops and ran the wrong route, leading to a second quarter pick-six thrown by Tony Romo.
The fourth-year wide receiver says he's now on the same page with the franchise quarterback because of the mistakes he made.
"That's when all that trust issue stuff, that's when it played a big factor," Bryant said. "Tony needed to believe in me and I needed to do my job right so he could do that. From there, not that I never took my job seriously, but I took it, I paid more attention during meetings, asked more questions.
"That's one thing I wanted to do, I felt like I can't get up and speak to a crowd or whatever but I got out of that. I felt like I needed to open up my mouth, ask more questions, 'What do I do when this guy comes? What do I do if this guy comes?' I knew the simple stuff but as the season went on a little bit more we were going to start seeing some funny looks and all of that, I needed to know what to do on everything and I got it done."
Bryant said it was so obvious that he was down on himself after that Week 4 loss that Romo and Cowboys coach Jason Garrett didn't get on him about the wrong route and incomplete passes.
"They already knew I was killing myself," Bryant said. "Like is said, it was basically decision-making, you can either feel bad, feel sorry for yourself or get your stuff together and be the person that you think that you can become."
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