Cowboys hiring Deion Sanders could be a path to keeping Mike Zimmer

Deion Sanders would make quite the interesting coach for the Dallas Cowboys.

The offseason the Dallas Cowboys find themselves in may have been inevitable for weeks and months leading up to it, but that has not stopped the team from finding some of the most Cowboys ways possible to stay relevant. Most fans seem to think they’ve done so for all of the wrong reasons so far, being linked to former players in Deion Sanders and Jason Witten as replacements for now-former head coach Mike McCarthy. Also in typical Cowboys fashion, they will sit in this circus for a while, unable to interview any candidates on teams still in the playoffs at this time. There is a long list of candidates from the college ranks, teams out of the playoffs, or out of coaching entirely like Pete Carroll, Mike Kafka, Drew Petzing, David Shaw, Arthur Smith, Adam Stenavich, Anthony Weaver, Liam Coen, Brian Flores, Patrick Graham, Robert Saleh, and Vance Joseph who have all interviewed for other openings with either the Bears, Jets, Saints, or Raiders. The Cowboys seem much more interested in at least giving the conversation around Witten and Sanders time to be fully fleshed out though, forcing both to be taken seriously in the name of not being embarrassed being a top priority.

While this feeding frenzy continues, here is the much more important thing for Cowboys followers to take seriously and not lose sight of. The Dallas Cowboys are in much more than just the head coaching market. McCarthy was obviously the most notable coach in Dallas to play out the 2024 season on an expiring contract, but this same “lame duck” status applied to many of his assistants. The closest to McCarthy on the coaching tree that also finds himself in limbo is defensive coordinator Mike Zimmer, following the completion of his first season back in Dallas and first in the NFL since 2021.

It was discussed prior to the conclusion of the Cowboys’ 7-10 season that McCarthy and Zimmer would likely be something of a “package deal” this offseason. If McCarthy stayed, the opportunity to bring back Zimmer would be clear. With McCarthy leaving, things are much more up in the air when it comes to how a new head coach will perceive the 68-year old football lifer. Zimmer can either be seen as one of the few chances to keep continuity from a previous staff on defense, or as simply another coach that got swept up in the regime change for the sake of a fresh start.

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The way Zimmer came out of retirement and got the most out of a Cowboys defense in the second half of the year that was battered by constant injuries, lineup changes, and the need to throw young players into the fire prematurely was admirable. Also playing in support of an offense that made gaining positive yards on any given play comically hard, the Cowboys defense under Zimmer in the latter part of the season looked like the much more regularly prepared unit ready to give this team a fighting chance. Micah Parsons, Jourdan Lewis, Osa Odighizuwa, and Chauncey Golston all had standout seasons.

Whether or not this was enough from Zimmer for the Cowboys front office to consider his future with the team as an important item when deciding their next head coach is a major thing to be determined on the long offseason checklist right now.

Even if it doesn’t go as far as the Jones’ putting an ultimatum on their next head coach needing to work with Zimmer, almost in the same fashion McCarthy was expected to work alongside offensive coordinator Kellen Moore upon his arrival in 2020, they may not have to while gaining a major selling point towards the legitimacy of Deion Sanders’ coaching candidacy in the process.

Mike Zimmer was Deion Sanders’ position coach with the Cowboys from 1995-99. Zimmer served as an analyst and consultant for Jackson State in Sanders’ final season there, before following him to Colorado in the same role for 2023. Zimmer’s nephew, Andrew Zimmer, joined Colorado’s staff as a graduate assistant in Coach Prime’s first season, and is now a quality control analyst for the Buffs. In December of 2023, Zimmer had this to say about his relationship with Sanders:

“Deion and I have a very interesting and unique but great relationship,” said Zimmer. “He’s gonna get the guys in there he wants, he’s an outstanding recruiter. He’s a terrific man who treats his players with the utmost respect. He can discipline them and wants them to be better people than just football players as they move forward.”

The ties between Sanders and Zimmer run deep, and at the moment, perhaps deeper than the actual ties between Sanders and the vacant Dallas Cowboys head coaching position. Sanders coaching both his sons as seniors this past season at Colorado got all of the national attention, but the former Cowboys Super Bowl champion has truly embraced the full scope of building a program and, along with that, the men that are apart of it as his players.

This clip of Sanders addressing the importance of his players’ grades in the classroom emerged over the weekend, discussing the consequences poor grades will have on their NIL checks. Depending on where one stands on if Coach Prime and the Cowboys are the right fit together, there are a ton of ways to look at something like this. For the pro-Deion crowd, it’s easy to point out how college football has already transformed into something resembling the pro game more than ever, and coaching players in the new era of NIL shares similarities to the NFL. For those a bit more skeptical of Sanders taking the leap from Boulder to Arlington, the expectation already being in place for NFL players to perform, and along with it the expectation that a head coach will always optimize their ability to do so, may be a tough transition for a first time head coach at the pro level.

However, for all of these fans that have an opinion on Coach Prime, which by Sanders’ choice is the entire football world itself, the idea of pairing him with Zimmer adds validity. Skeptics of his lack of experience could point to Zimmer’s time as the Minnesota Vikings head coach as something to help ease the growing pains, and supporters of Sanders in the first place should doubly enjoy the idea of having a second season of Zimmer as Cowboys defensive coordinator. Their best player on this side of the ball, Micah Parsons, is certainly a fan of this very idea.

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The Cowboys transitioned defensive coordinators three times in just five seasons under McCarthy, meaning there is precedent on both sides here. Doing so yet again would certainly not be a new and shocking experience for the Cowboys, but keeping Zimmer around somehow instantly adds a sense of direction (at least on one side of the ball) that this offseason is severely lacking early on.

Add in the fact that Jerry Jones’ current coaching search is reportedly a “solo mission”, and the idea of getting around the table with three old friends in Jones, Sanders, and Zimmer to come up with the new direction for America’s Team is not so far-fetched, is it?