Brice Butler: If I’m not a starter, I’m not returning to Dallas

lostxn

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Brice Butler: If I’m not a starter, I’m not returning to Dallas
Posted by Charean Williams on January 11, 2018, 4:02 PM EST

Cowboys receiver Brice Butler made 15 catches in 2017. He has 73 in his five-year career.

Yet, Butler says only lack of opportunity held him back, declaring he would have produced better than Dez Bryant this season if given Bryant’s 132 targets. Further, Butler, who becomes a free agent in March, gave the Cowboys an ultimatum while making the rounds at Fox Sports 1 on Thursday.

“With Dallas, the situation has to be right for me to go back,” Butler said on The Herd, via the Dallas Morning News. “I have to be a starter. If I’m not starting, I’m not going back.”

Butler, 27, played 261 offensive snaps, fourth among the team’s wide receivers, and Dak Prescott targeted him only 23 times in 490 attempts.

“I think in this league, when you think about the business aspect, you’ve got to follow the money trail,” Butler said on Undisputed. “Both of our starters made money. Terrance [Williams] just got paid last year. So there were times where I was like, ‘I’m making plays, aren’t we trying to win games? Why am I not on the field?’ But that’s the only thing that I can really think of.”

The Cowboys will have change at the position next season. Cowboys receivers coach Derek Dooley left for the University of Missouri; the team likely asks Bryant to take a pay cut, and Butler apparently will seek a chance to be a starter elsewhere.

Bryant made 69 catches for 838 yards and six touchdowns, and Butler said he’s “100 percent” confident he could have had bigger numbers given the same chances Bryant had.

“Because I’m ready. It’s my time,” said Butler, who led the team with a 21.1 yards per catch average. “I’ve been there for three years. I feel like me and Dak have a really good relationship. We work on routes. There’s times that we might not have completed a square-out throw in practice, and we’re taking that time out in practice to actually work on it. So I think that’s why when you saw us in the game, he tried to come to me, and most of the times we produced.”
 

boozeman

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:lol

This guy might make more of a case for himself if he was available the three games that killed us down the stretch.

But he wasn't.

And this has to be a first. A guy with 15 catches on an entire season saying he deserves to be a starter.
 

Cowboysrock55

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He may have a point though. In Dallas it's not an actual competition. No matter how much he outplayed Dez he was never going to jump him on the depth chart.
 

Cowboysrock55

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I know I'm in the minority on this, but I'd think about keeping Butler and dumping Dez. I think Butler gives you a lot of what Dez does with better deep speed. They both make the spectacular catches and drop some of the easy ones. Butler does a really good job of going up and over guys. And what you can get Butler for on a contract allows you to use a top pick there and take some time getting the young guy ready. Frankly, Butler does a better job of getting separation. I think Butler has been under utilized in Dallas and if given the chance could give you those 700-800 yards receiving like Dez if given the balls.

I do find his attitude a little irritating but I think he is just frustrated right now in Dallas and has a high opinion of himself. But then again, most WR's are sort of divas so it isn't that surprising.
 

DLK150

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I know I'm in the minority on this, but I'd think about keeping Butler and dumping Dez. I think Butler gives you a lot of what Dez does with better deep speed. They both make the spectacular catches and drop some of the easy ones. Butler does a really good job of going up and over guys. And what you can get Butler for on a contract allows you to use a top pick there and take some time getting the young guy ready. Frankly, Butler does a better job of getting separation. I think Butler has been under utilized in Dallas and if given the chance could give you those 700-800 yards receiving like Dez if given the balls.

I do find his attitude a little irritating but I think he is just frustrated right now in Dallas and has a high opinion of himself. But then again, most WR's are sort of divas so it isn't that surprising.
I agree and I'd be fine with that. Butler isn't a WR1 type but we've already been lacking that for a couple, few years and Butler can fill the role as a stopgap.
 

Rev

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Im ok with moving on from Dez as a WR1 but not ok with replacing him with this JAG. Let him walk.
 

L.T. Fan

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I know I'm in the minority on this, but I'd think about keeping Butler and dumping Dez. I think Butler gives you a lot of what Dez does with better deep speed. They both make the spectacular catches and drop some of the easy ones. Butler does a really good job of going up and over guys. And what you can get Butler for on a contract allows you to use a top pick there and take some time getting the young guy ready. Frankly, Butler does a better job of getting separation. I think Butler has been under utilized in Dallas and if given the chance could give you those 700-800 yards receiving like Dez if given the balls.

I do find his attitude a little irritating but I think he is just frustrated right now in Dallas and has a high opinion of himself. But then again, most WR's are sort of divas so it isn't that surprising.
I am pretty much of the same opinion. Butler has consistently been able to deliver a verticle threat when he is in the lineup. Bryant will never be able to do that on the minus side of the 50 yard line. He is a verticle threat primarily when the LOS is 30 yards or less.
 

mcnuttz

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I know I'm in the minority on this, but I'd think about keeping Butler and dumping Dez. I think Butler gives you a lot of what Dez does with better deep speed. They both make the spectacular catches and drop some of the easy ones. Butler does a really good job of going up and over guys. And what you can get Butler for on a contract allows you to use a top pick there and take some time getting the young guy ready. Frankly, Butler does a better job of getting separation. I think Butler has been under utilized in Dallas and if given the chance could give you those 700-800 yards receiving like Dez if given the balls.

I do find his attitude a little irritating but I think he is just frustrated right now in Dallas and has a high opinion of himself. But then again, most WR's are sort of divas so it isn't that surprising.
I agree with this, but we'll still need a true #1 WR.
 

bbgun

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he's in no position to be issuing ultimatums
 

L.T. Fan

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he's in no position to be issuing ultimatums
Practically speaking no but since he has a contract expiring he can take that position.
 

Cowboysrock55

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Practically speaking no but since he has a contract expiring he can take that position.
Yeah, and here is why I like Butler. Dak completed 62% of his throws to him last year. Which by it self isn't anything special. But those completions went for an average of 21.1 yards and 3 TDs. Daks efficiency throwing to Brice Butler has every indication to me that he should have been a bigger part of the offense. We completed a high percentage of high risk throws to the guy.

Now can we find someone like that in this draft instead? Probably. I'd start with the 6'6" kid from New Mexico State for example.
 

Irving Cowboy

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He dropped some balls that were perfectly placed, too. He would have been in the mid-80's had he caught them.
 

Cowboysrock55

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He dropped some balls that were perfectly placed, too. He would have been in the mid-80's had he caught them.
Yep, his drops unfortunately remind me of Dez. The guy has great hands but he drops the easy ones for some reason. Then he will follow it up with a super tough catch. It's crazy to me but at least he is a hands catcher.
 

lostxn

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The interesting parts of Brice Butler’s recent candid, controversial comments
Brice Butler was very candid about his thoughts on the Cowboys’ offensive woes this past season.
By Dave Halprin and Michael Sisemore Jan 12, 2018, 1:00pm CST

Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
If you haven’t heard, Brice Butler appears to be a little disgruntled with how seldom his number was called in the 2017 season. As players often do, he made the media rounds to FS1 and others, and made some comments that are stirring up some controversy.

Brice Butler’s stats for the season were as follows: 15 receptions, 317 yards, three touchdowns, with 21.1 yards per catch. He didn’t feel like he got nearly the opportunities that he deserved and that will likely be the driving forced behind him not returning to the Cowboys in 2018 though he leaves the door open.

A lot of attention was paid to some of the more controversial statements that Butler made about Dez Bryant. Our own DannyPhantom covered that earlier.

Instead of going down that rabbit hole again, let’s take a look at some of the candid things that Butler said about the general topic of the Cowboys offense and coaches. This is where Butler’s comments really get interesting.

While the exchanges below involve Dez, they are indicative of a larger problem that has been discussed a few times on these pages The Cowboys offense isn’t evolving with it’s personnel. It really needs to.

Dez without Tony Romo needs to become a different kind of receiver. First, let’s read the exchange:

Question: I look at Dez Bryant and I’ve watched him a lot. ... Dez runs two routes, either an in-breaking route or a back-shoulder fade.

Butler: Mmhmm

Question: So it makes it very easy to cover him because you don’t have to worry about the speed out. You talked about how you missed a throw sometime in practice with Dak, and you’ll work on it after.

Butler: Mmhmm.

That’s Shannon Sharpe talking about what he’s seen on film with Dez, and he’s not far off. Of course Bryant does run other kinds of routes, but percentage wise, the in-breaking pattern and the fade/jump-ball route dominate. They are patterns Tony Romo liked to run with Dez, especially the fade/jump ball. Romo was a master at placing the back-shoulder fade exactly where it needed to be, he also would place passes just high enough and deep enough for Dez to jump up and out-physical his coverage for the catch. Dak Prescott doesn’t throw the back-shoulder fade or the jump ball particularly well. Yet the Cowboys kept force-feeding it into the offense.

This is one example of how the Cowboys would do well to Dakify the offense. Dez is a beast on in-breaking patterns and slants. Yes, he dropped way too many passes this season, but if Dak and Dez worked a full offseason on their timing on these shorter, over-the-middle type of plays, and if the Cowboys would actually utilize Dez in this way much more often, things could really change for both players.

Back to Brice Butler’s comments, where he suggests that the Cowboys and Dez should consider moving him around more, even putting him in the slot some.

Butler: I think there’s things, in all fairness, that they can do to help Dez get the ball. I think if they put him in the slot and move him around and get him some [looks] underneath. He’s a physical receiver. I think he would [go with that], we actually spoke about that, and he said he would love to do it. It’s a hard position, you’ve got to run some different routes, your feet have to be a little quicker than on the outside, you’ve got to be able to react because the nickel might jump outside once your run up on him. Things would change, but I think they could do some things to help him as well, though. He has a different way of expressing his feelings, so a lot of times he gets a bad rap or perception because of what you guys see on TV.

Skip: So you guys are cool?

Butler: Yeah, we have a good relationship, we talk about a lot of things. In the last few weeks of the season, he was speaking about that, and I what I said to him was, ‘That’s what Larry [Fitzgerald] did.’ And Larry went from 80-90 balls outside to inside catching 110 again. Bruce Arians got there. I was like as long as you can work on that route tree in the slot within our offense, and our coaches could be creative in there, you can do it.

This bleeds into another subject broached quite often this offseason, the Cowboys lack of creativity on offense. Why do they have to play Jason Witten on every down? Why can’t they adopt more from other schemes instead of almost slavishly sticking to their vertical-passing, power-running scheme? Why haven't they moved this offense from Romo-friendly to Dak-friendly quicker? The answer to that, I presume, is 13-3. When Dallas had such success in 2016 without Romo and with Dak, the need to change didn’t seem that big. The 2017 season has brought that need into sharp focus.

The Cowboys would do well to start altering their approach, and discard some of their stubbornness. Again, Butler comments.

Butler: Our offense is a positive and a negative I feel because we have very talented players, we’ve got Cole Beasley, we’ve got Witten who’s played for ever, we’ve got Dez Bryant, we’ve got Zeke. But the thing that a lot of us will say - every one of us will say - is that when they find what your strength is, they kind of just, that’s what you do.

Question: So they put you in that box and you can’t come out of it?

Butler: That’s kind of what you do. For me for instance, I only ran verticals. I mean I ran other routes. You saw me run other routes, but really you only saw me run the vertical. And that’s not because I couldn’t.

While Butler finishes talking about himself and vertical routes, what he is saying could easily be applied to Dez and the routes he runs, as we noted above.

At another point in Butler’s day-long media-fest, he talked about how much input Tony Romo had into the offense, and how he basically ran things on that side of the ball, going as far as to say Romo was the coach on offense.

Butler: Tony Romo was the guy that installed the plays during the meetings during the week. He talked about all that stuff. When I first got there, I had never seen nothing like that. When I left Oakland, Derek Carr was a second-year quarterback. He was a kid. And my rookie year was Terrelle Pryor, so you know he wasn’t calling the plays. So when I first got to Dallas, when I saw all the input that Tony was telling us, I was like, ‘Dang, this is crazy. The coach ain’t really really coaching.’

Butler says the Cowboys will change the offense for Dak now.

Butler: Now it’s Dak as the quarterback, now it’s moreso offensive coordinator doing things. Dak is a rookie, Dak is a second-year player, he’s still learning. He doesn’t know the scriptures of the offense like Tony knew the scriptures of the offense. The Cowboys organization will start making it more Dak-friendly or whatever, more stuff off the run, more play-action passing and stuff like that because that’s his skill set. That’s what he does well. He’s a dual-threat quarterback.

It’s likely Brice Butler won’t return, teams generally don’t like players going public with this kind of stuff. But, it is instructive in that it kind of validates the things that plenty of people have been saying about the Cowboys offense later in the season and into this offseason.

There are improvements to be made, and the Cowboys need to re-think how they are utilizing their personnel. With Dak Prescott at quarterback, combined with the slowing of Jason Witten and the decline of Dez Bryant’s dominance, Dallas must alter what they are doing and fit the scheme to their current personnel. Can Scott Linehan do that? We are about to find out.
 

L.T. Fan

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Yep, his drops unfortunately remind me of Dez. The guy has great hands but he drops the easy ones for some reason. Then he will follow it up with a super tough catch. It's crazy to me but at least he is a hands catcher.
Reminds me of Alvin Harper.
 

shane

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It'll be interesting to see what he can do as a starter on another team. He is a guy with potential that could have been utilized by a better coaching staff.
 

shane

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I know I'm in the minority on this, but I'd think about keeping Butler and dumping Dez. I think Butler gives you a lot of what Dez does with better deep speed. They both make the spectacular catches and drop some of the easy ones. Butler does a really good job of going up and over guys. And what you can get Butler for on a contract allows you to use a top pick there and take some time getting the young guy ready. Frankly, Butler does a better job of getting separation. I think Butler has been under utilized in Dallas and if given the chance could give you those 700-800 yards receiving like Dez if given the balls.

I do find his attitude a little irritating but I think he is just frustrated right now in Dallas and has a high opinion of himself. But then again, most WR's are sort of divas so it isn't that surprising.
Cut Dez, resign Butler on the cheap, and draft a WR in rounds 1-3 sounds good to me.
 
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