BALTIMORE — Ravens wide receiver Dez Bryant surprisingly announced that he has tested positive for COVID-19 just 30 minutes before his much-anticipated reunion with the Dallas Cowboys on Tuesday night.
“Tell me why they pull me from warming up so I can go get tested,” Bryant posted. “… I tested positive for Covid.
“The crazy thing is i have the same damn routine. … this s— do not make sense to me.”
He then said he would not return this season.
“Yea I’m going to go ahead and call it a quit for the rest of the season,” Bryant posted on Twitter. “… I can’t deal with this.”
Shortly after Bryant’s tweet, the Ravens announced Bryant had been scratched due to illness.
Bryant was out on the field about two hours prior to kickoff, catching passes from backup quarterback Trace McSorley. He crossed his arms for his signature ‘X’ before walking into the tunnel to the locker room.
Bryant, however, was noticeably absent when Baltimore held its full-team warmups.
Bryant, 32, was set to play the Cowboys for the first time since Dallas cut him two years ago. Days before the game, Bryant said it was going to be “an exciting moment” to play the team that he spent eight seasons with and caught a franchise-record 73 touchdowns passes.
He becomes the first Ravens player to test positive in a week. The Ravens were just involved in one of the biggest outbreaks in professional sports, with more than a dozen players testing positive in a 10-day stretch.
After joining the Ravens’ practice squad on Oct. 27, Bryant was signed to the active roster four weeks later. In three games, Bryant hasn’t had much of an impact on the NFL’s 31st-ranked passing attack, making four catches for 28 yards.