Cowboys release Bryant, looking for salary-cap relief

Dez Bryant never lived up to the big contract he signed with the Dallas Cowboys when he was among the best receivers in the NFL.

The Cowboys released Bryant on Friday, deciding salary-cap relief and declining production from one of their biggest stars outweighed the risk of him proving them wrong by becoming a Pro Bowl player again somewhere else.

And Bryant used Twitter to make it clear that he will be trying.

“If I didn’t have my edge, I’ve got it now,” he wrote among a flurry of tweets over two days, starting the day before a meeting where owner and general manager Jerry Jones told him he was being released. “It’s very personal.”

The 29-year-old Bryant signed a $70 million, fiveyear deal after leading the NFL with 16 touchdowns in 2014.

But he didn’t have a 1,000-yard season in three years under the big contract, and just played all 16 games without a 100yard day for the first time in his eight-year career.

Bryant was owed $12.5 million on each of the last two years of his deal, with a $16.5 million salary cap hit both times. The release clears about $8.5 million in cap space.

Jim Kelly is progressing so “remarkably well” two weeks after surgery to have cancer removed from his jaw, his doctor expects the Hall of Fame quarterback to be released from the hospital soon.

“I’m very optimistic,” said Mount Sinai head and neck surgeon Mark Urken in a 20-minute video interview released Friday by the New York City hospital. “He is about as tough a patient — tough in a good way — in terms of being just incredibly courageous, and he continues to amaze me.”

Though Kelly is still unable to chew, he is now being fed orally in what Urken called: “a huge milestone and a segue for him to be able to leave the hospital.”

Urken did not provide an exact timetable of when the former Bills star might be discharged and return to his home in suburban Buffalo.

A Mount Sinai official was only able to say Kelly won’t be released from the hospital on Friday.

Urken said he’s very optimistic Kelly will regain the same speech and eating functions as he had before undergoing the 12-hour operation.

“I expect that he’s going to recover really excellent function; his speech, I expect will be outstanding,” Urken said.