Before the Dallas Cowboys announced Brian Schottenheimer as their new head coach, one exciting name had emerged as a potential candidate: Colorado's Deion Sanders. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones spoke to Sanders early in the process, although the conversation eventually didn't go anywhere.
On "The Rich Eisen Show" on Friday, Sanders admitted that he gave his conversation with Jones some significant thought, "praying and weighing" on the possibility of becoming Dallas' head coach.
"It was great. It made me think," Sanders said of his call with Jones. "Jerry is one of those type of guys that, he's like myself, that you've gotta have an opinion, you've gotta make a statement, you gotta respond, because he provokes so much thought. So when he calls and we had our little discussion and our conversation, you hang up and you start thinking, 'Hey. Wow, that's something.' You just weigh everything. And then you go out there, you go way out there with it."
Sanders said that from there, it was easy to let his imagination run wild — such as, he joked, the idea that he could take a helicopter to work every day. "I mean, you start thinking crazy things," he said.
When asked how seriously Sanders was thinking about the job, he admitted that he had given it more thought than he was letting on.
"I had a lot of praying to do. Praying and weighing," Sanders said.
Sanders played for the Cowboys for five seasons during his 14-year career as an NFL cornerback, and has a strong relationship with Jones. (Sanders told Eisen that Jones is listed in his phone as "Direct Deposit" — or "D.D." for short.)
But although the two discussed the possibility of a hire, Sanders never had an official interview. Jones later confirmed that Sanders was never a serious candidate for the job.
Sanders said Friday that he would struggle to coach in the NFL, where a player's measured value is given more weight. "That's somewhat what we're missing now: heart," he said.
More importantly, he likes his current job at Colorado, where he holds a lot of control over how he wants to shape the program. He was also able to coach his sons, Shedeur and Shilo, at the school; both have declared for the 2025 NFL Draft, with Shedeur projected to be a top-three pick.
"When you're happy and you got that 'it,' you call your own shots and you don't have to do what you don't want to do. And I'm at that point in life right now where I'm not doing nothing I don't want to do," Sanders said. "Why would I go to the NFL and not coach my son? Or coach against my son? That don't make sense, for me. For a lot of people, it may, but it don't make sense for me."
Sanders agreed with Eisen that it would have taken something "highly significant" — salary-wise — to get him to take the Dallas job, but said that negotiations never reached that stage.
"It never got to that point," Sanders said. "It's just a thought process."
