To be fair, Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant wasn't trying to say he was better than Calvin "Megatron" Johnson. He was just rattling off some pro-athlete intensity-and-toughness boilerplate in a radio interview when he uttered the fateful line "I believe I can do whatever he can do."
Thus, a narrative was born. The purported Dez versus Megatron feud dominated pregame and now postgame chatter, which is useful since it helps distract from the actual storyline of the game, which is too painful to recount.
The moral of the story for Dez is that it's best to stick to vague platitudes about intensity and toughness and avoid direct comparisons, especially when the person you're comparing yourself to is about to rack up the second highest single-game receiving total in NFL history:
FINAL TALLY
Dez Bryant: 72 yards, 2 TD.
Calvin Johnson: 329 yards (2nd most ever), TD.
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) October 27, 2013
What those stats fail to measure is sideline tantrums, a metric in which Bryant bested Johnson 2-0:
Which led to unflattering comparisons (for Dez) on Bryant and Johnson's relative maturity levels.
In sum, Dez Bryant is no Calvin Johnson and would be wise to keep his mouth shut. But he's more than welcome to keep doing this:
