OXNARD, Calif. -- After two days of training camp, you’ve got to give Dez Bryant credit for not letting his personal drama affect his preparation for the season.

Bryant was phenomenal during the Cowboys’ first two practices. He has consistently made plays on a wide variety of routes, giving prized rookie cornerback Morris Claiborne a rude welcome to the NFL while flashing the potential that leads his bosses to be so patient with his off-field problems.

“I don’t want to speak specifically to Dez, but I’ll speak to the point of being able to compartmentalize things,” Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett said. “We talk to our players all the time about leaving the emotional baggage at the door. Everybody has issues in their lives, and we’ve just got to make sure that we’re mentally tough enough and strong enough and mature enough to say, OK, when it’s time to go to work playing and coaching football, we’re able to do that.

“It’s a theme that our players and coaches hear from me over and over and over again. It is about compartmentalizing. It is about mental discipline. We understand that players and coaches are human beings and a lot of things are going on in their lives, but the best ones are able to focus on the task at hand. We’ve certainly talked to him about that.”

The Cowboys can also create ideal circumstances during camp for Bryant to focus on football.

They’ve kept him off limits to the media, which NFL rules prevent from happening during the regular season. His friends and family are far away, which won’t be the case when the Cowboys return from California in a few weeks.

Bryant is mentally tough enough to thrive while essentially living on a football island. Can he maintain that focus when he returns to his rocky real life?