Jerry Jones: Talk with Deion Sanders was "just a conversation about the team"

After formally introducing Brian Schottenheimer as his new head coach, Cowboys owner and General Manager Jerry Jones downplayed his conversation with Colorado coach Deion Sanders.

Jones characterized his visit with Sanders as more a talk with someone he has known for decades than a job interview.

"Just a conversation about the team, and about where he is, and his boys, conversation with his boys, that type of conversation," Jones said. "I've said I've talked to a lot of coaches, and Deion has a job."

Jones made Sanders the highest-paid defensive player in the NFL in 1995, and the Cowboys won the Super Bowl that year. Another Hall of Famer on that team, Michael Irvin, thought the Cowboys had an opportunity to make a similar splash this year by hiring Sanders as their coach. Jones downplayed any talk that he and Irvin are clashing.

"I think the world of Michael Irvin, I think everybody knows that," Jones said.

Irvin is certainly right that hiring Sanders would have made a splash. But hiring Sanders would have required buying out his Colorado contract and paying him more than Colorado is paying him, and that wasn't something Jones was going to do. So Schottenheimer got the job, and Sanders got only a conversation with Jones.