Cowboys Crazy Rumor: Deion & Shedeur Sanders Sign with Dallas In Place of Dak Prescott and Mike McCarthy

With quarterback Dak Prescott and coach Mike McCarthy entering the final year of their contracts, the Dallas Cowboys could be setting themselves up to make a run at hiring Deion Sanders before drafting his son Shedeur.

Deion, Jerry, Shedeur /

Could the Dallas Cowboys be setting themselves up to make the potential pipedream addition of hiring current Colorado coach Deion Sanders before selecting his son and quarterback Shedeur Sanders in the 2025 NFL Draft? 

Or would such a setup be a "pipedream'' - meaning a good thing - at all?

It's a rumor that is getting legs ... and to somwe seems more of a possibility than it once did when Sanders told CowboysSI.com in an exclusive that he “ain’t going to the NFL.”

However, things have since changed. Sanders is entering his second season as the Buffaloes coach and potentially the last one where he’ll have his two sons, Shedeur and Shilo, on his roster. Meanwhile, the Cowboys are seemingly non-committal to the future of coach Mike McCarthy and quarterback Dak Prescott after a third-straight 12-win season culminated in an early playoff exit.

With the contracts of McCarthy and Prescott set to expire next offseason, it could open the door for potentially the father-son duo of “Coach Prime” and Sheduer to continue intertwining their careers at the NFL level.

Oct 7, 2023; Tempe, Arizona, USA; Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders with son and / Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

However, there is one obvious roadblock: the draft itself. Despite this offseason being one of inactivity from the Cowboys, as they’ve lost several key contributors from last season’s roster and have only made one free-agent addition with the signing of linebacker Eric Kendricks, the question becomes, have they regressed enough to get Sanders?

Or, a flip side of that question: Is young Sanders good enough to merit being a high pick?

Even without Tyron Smith, Tony Pollard, Tyler Biadasz, and others, the Cowboys should still have a roster good enough to win at least eight games. If an 8-9 record is the worst-case scenario, it may not be bad enough to land Sanders in the draft ... again, assuming he's as good as his dad predicts he'll be.

According to ESPN’s Matt Miller’s early quarterback rankings for the 2025 draft, Sanders is the third-best signal-caller potentially available, only behind Georgia’s Carson Beck and Texas’s Quinn Ewers. However, as Miller notes, Sanders was once his “QB2” following Colorado’s 5-0 start to last season, but he fell to three due to inconsistency. 

Deion, Jerry, Shedeur /

If Sanders can improve upon his 3,230 yards, 27 touchdowns, and three interceptions from last season, he could see his draft stock rise. In fact, Jerry, in a recent on-field meeting with the Sanderses, said Shedeur "very easily could be the top pick in the draft.''

Maybe. But all in all, any potential plan like this - and again, we're not at this early stage attaching this thinking directly to anybody inside The Star - is a risky and even dubious in most every possible way.

If the Joneses are “blowing up” their roster after 2024, would Deion want to come here? Can Deion really work as an NFL head coach? Is he better than McCarthy? Can Shedeur really play (so well that his dad is already promising to "pull an Eli,'' meaning that the Sanders family will make pick-and-choose demands of the NFL in regard to teams they don't want Shedeur to play for)? Can Shedeur become as good as Dak?

And then the question that won't go away for the Cowboys when it comes to the rumor of bringing “Coach Prime” and/or his son back to Dallas: Would such a move be good for the football side of the business? Or would it be good only for the marketing arm of "America's Team''?