The Dallas Cowboys fell to 3-7 with their loss to the Houston Texans on Monday night. If the season ended today, they would have the No. 9 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.
With Dallas on a five-game losing streak, it seemingly won't be long before draft talk becomes the center of conversation. In the meantime, though, speculation about Mike McCarthy's future is running rampant locally and nationally.
McCarthy had another disappointing outing against the Texans. Among the highlights were him taking three points off the board in the second half and a terrible play-call on 4th-and-2 in the red zone on the same drive, and not giving Trey Lance a single snap.
McCarthy lamented not playing Lance, but it's too late for apologies. It seems like a forgone conclusion that McCarthy will be let go after the season. While Bill Belichick is the prohibitive favorite to succeed McCarthy, Colorado head coach Deion Sanders is another popular pick.
Cowboys legend Michael Irvin is besotted with the idea of Sanders coaching Dallas in 2025 and he revealed on FS1's The Herd on Tuesday what it would take to get Sanders to return to his old stomping grounds.
Michael Irvin says Deion Sanders would coach the Cowboys if Dallas draft Shedeur Sanders
Michael Irvin says Deion would accept the Cowboys job if they draft Shedeur Sanders.
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 19, 2024
"100%. And I can tell you, good sources have told me that. Great sources have told me that." pic.twitter.com/RqgZbBGBjB
That's good intel from the Hall of Famer, but in revealing this info he unknowingly confirmed the Cowboys won't be hiring Sanders.
It's long been theorized that Sanders and his son, Shedeur, are a package deal if Sanders was to leave Colorado. The idea of pairing Sanders with Shedeur, who's considered one of the top QB prospects in the 2025 class, would be intriguing if Dallas was in the market for a quarterback.
That obviously is not the case. The Cowboys just made Dak Prescott the highest-paid player in the NFL. Like Prescott's last contract, his new deal includes a no-trade clause and significant cap hits that make him virtually unmovable.
The Cowboys included void years to allow wiggle room to restructure the deal in the name of lowering Prescott's cap hit - not so they can move on. As currently constructed, it's not realistic for Dallas to move off Prescott until 2027. That obviously doesn't align with drafting Sanders.
Let's just say for the sake of argument that Dallas wanted to draft Shedeur. Assuming Prescott would even lift his no-trade clause, the Cowboys would save $13.32 million on the cap and absorb a debilitating $103.21 million (!) in dead cap if he's traded before June 1. If he's traded with a post-June 1 designation, they would save $41.146 million and inherit $47.75 million in dead money.
Again, that is assuming Prescott would lift his no-trade clause and Dallas would find a buyer for his enormous contract.
This won't be the last we hear of Irvin or the national media trying to speak a Sanders-Cowboys reunion into existence. But it is nothing more than fantasy being that Sanders would need Dallas to draft Shedeur.