Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett has insisted that he understands why Dez Bryant stormed into the locker room early in his side's 37-36 defeat to the Green Bay Packers on Sunday.
Bryant left the field with 1:21 still to play in the match after seeing Green Bay take a knee to close out the victory having trailed by 23 points at half time.
Garrett revealed that he had spoken to Bryant and given him a friendly warning about his future conduct, but the coach also empathised with his wide receiver.
"I just addressed it with him dead on. Dez is a fantastic football player and he's a fantastic young man. He loves playing the game of football. He plays it with a tremendous amount of passion and emotion. He has a great deal of passion and emotion for our football team and his teammates. He was frustrated at the end of that ballgame," Garrett told reporters.
"He said 'Coach, I just couldn't handle it when I saw those guys in our stadium taking a knee in a game we should have won.' He said, 'I don't want to do something stupid with everybody watching so I wanted to remove myself from that situation'. I certainly understood that and explained to him why it's important not to do that in the future.
"We all have that same kind of investment in that ballgame, it's difficult for everybody when things don't go well and he needs to understand how to handle that. I think he'll handle that better in the future. He was very apologetic to me and was concerned about the situation. Again, we'll handle it the right way next time."
In losing the match, the Cowboys missed the chance to draw level with the Philadelphia Eagles at the top of the NFC East, remaining one win behind the leaders with just two games to play.
Barney Corkhill
