Is Jerry Jones hiding a proverbial trick up his hypothetical sleeve? Kelly Pitts believes so.
Pitts, the father of Florida tight end Kyle Pitts, campaigned for his son to land with the Dallas Cowboys, predicting team owner/general manager Jerry Jones will “shock everyone” during Thursday night’s opening round of the 2021 NFL Draft.
“I’m nobody’s dummy. I don’t want to go to Denver, nor do I want to go to New England. I don’t want to go anywhere it’s cold,” Pitts recently told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I’ve been living here 30 years and change. I’m ready for some pure heat. I think Jerry’s got something up his sleeve that’s going to shock everyone. That’s just my personal opinion. Doesn’t mean a lot.”
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Jerry Says No
While it could be a smokescreen, the Cowboys czar on Tuesday strongly shut down speculation that he’s infatuated with Pitts — a “generational talent” whose comparisons range from Kellen Winslow Sr. to Calvin Johnson to … LeBron James — and wrote off his accompanying trade rumors as “not legitimate.”
“It’s a distortion for this draft and where we are there,” Jones said in his pre-draft news conference, via Pro Football Talk. “It implies something that’s just not the case. We’re not going to go in there and spend inordinate value to maneuver up there so we can get Pitts.”
The Cowboys, however, have done little to disguise their interest in Pitts, who held an official (virtual) interview with the club’s brain trust earlier this month. During the meeting, Jones gushed over his prospective addition to an already supercharged offense.
“Boy, I’ll tell you what, I’m excited to have you come into this league,” he told Pitts. “And, man, what a pair up we could do with ole Dak Prescott and some of those guys that we’ve got out there with options to get you the ball. So, we can dream of visions of sugar plums around here.”
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Dak’s Draft Plan
There’s little doubt Pitts would instantly and overwhelmingly thrive in Dallas working alongside the likes of Amari Cooper, CeeDee Lamb, Michael Gallup and Ezekiel Elliott — with $160 million Prescott running point.
But it simply isn’t realistic to think the Cowboys eschew an opportunity to bolster its leaky defense in favor of making an offensive luxury pick. Just ask Dak, a realist, himself.
“We’ve got some great leaders [in the front office], we just went and made a defensive change,” Prescott said in a Wednesday radio interview. “So, I’m trusting obviously the front office, and the people that do their job. They drafted me, so I believe in those guys and think they know what they’re talking about. Obviously, I think it will be a heavy defensive draft for us. You just look on the offensive side at the weapons we got, and I think that’s why I said go defense. I mean, we got Amari Cooper. We got Blake Jarwin coming back from an injury. We got CeeDee [Lamb] coming in his second year. Michael Gallup who I think is gonna have the biggest year of his career, yet. Obviously, Zeke is in the backfield. I just think it’s obvious you go defense, and we just make our team better over on that side.”
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Kyle Pitts’ Dad Lets Slip ‘Shocking’ Jerry Jones, Cowboys Draft Move