Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant has been on quite a roll lately.
He has 29 catches for 475 yards and six touchdowns in his last four games, three of which have been Cowboys wins that have kept them in striking distance of the Giants in the NFC East. It’s the kind of consistently strong performance that the Cowboys have been hoping to see since Bryant joined the team and it has the guy charged with coming up with a plan to stop him this weekend thinking about another Cowboys wide receiver who made in impact in the No. 88 jersey.
“He really reminds me in a lot of ways of Michael Irvin. The way he can go get the football, his acceleration, his run after catch, his strength, you know Michael was great. He used to push guys off. Dez seems like he has great strength when running routes in press,” Bengals defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer said in an interview on KESN, via the Dallas Morning News. “He’s made some unbelievable catches on back shoulder fades that (Tony) Romo has thrown to him. In the Redskins game, he caught that ball and ran about 65 yards. He turned on the jets on that one. I think he’s a tremendous football player. They have a lot of talent there.”
It’s not the first time that Bryant’s drawn Irvin comparisons. They’ve come from his exploits on and off the field, although the Cowboys obviously hope there’s more of the former than the latter as his career unfolds.
The Bengals defense has been playing well during the team’s four-game winning streak, although that’s mitigated a bit by the fact that the last three of those wins have come against the Chiefs, Raiders and Chargers. Bryant and the Cowboys will provide a stiffer test for Cincinnati in one of the few games this weekend with major playoff implications for both teams.