DALLAS -- No average team rides as high and mighty in the offseason as the Cowboys.
A 6-10 record can't stop people from thinking Dallas is on the brink of something special. And now we have disparate but significant NFL figures from Seattle to Baltimore -- that would be Russell Wilson and Mel Kiper Jr. -- reaching out to lend the team a hand.
I actually think what Kiper did (if his prognosis could prove to be just reasonably accurate) offers the Cowboys greater hope, but let's save his latest draft analysis for a moment and focus on the supposedly bigger news from the Seattle quarterback. Something has gone wrong with Wilson and the Seahawks -- something beyond rumors that never amounted to much in the past, anyway -- and now Wilson's agent has listed four teams to which his client would willingly accept a trade.
Those four are the Cowboys, Bears, Saints and Raiders.
(Before anyone gets too giddy about Dallas or any other team gaining a future Hall of Famer, bear in mind Seattle would take a monstrous hit of about $39 million in dead cap money. That's several million more than the rebuilding Eagles absorbed to rid themselves of Carson Wentz, and no one views Seattle as a team starting over.)
Mainly, I'm trying to figure out what kind of list this is. What fuses these four teams together?
The Saints and Bears need a quarterback. The Raiders might, but say they don't. The Cowboys, of course, shouldn't, but their incapacity to sign their own means they could.
New Orleans is a proven playoff contender. The other three visit the playoffs sporadically with indifferent results. Dallas and Chicago are major markets. New Orleans and Las Vegas are not.
If you just want to enter fantasy land and think about a Dallas deal, it doesn't rid the Cowboys of their quarterback issues. It merely changes them. Wilson's cap figures are enormous the next three years, so that doesn't go away. He's a more experienced, more polished and better quarterback than Dak Prescott.
While we are seeing crazy things happen with quarterbacks in 2021, I can't believe the Seahawks are going to punt the season to rid themselves of a great but unhappy player.
That's why Kiper's analysis is more intriguing for Dallas. It's also historic, and I'll have to admit I was unaware that in 38 years of doing mock drafts, Mel had never allowed himself to make trades. Did not realize there was a Kiper Trade Barrier we had not cleared, but now we have.
And that freedom allowed him to project five quarterbacks going to Jacksonville, Atlanta, San Francisco, Carolina and New England before the Cowboys make their first selection at No. 10. In case you're wondering, that's (in order) Clemson's Trevor Lawrence, BYU's Zach Wilson, Ohio State's Justin Fields, Alabama's Mac Jones and North Dakota State's Trey Lance going to those five clubs.
That allows the Cowboys to grab Alabama cornerback Patrick Surtain II with the 10th pick. More than anything, that's what the next two months should be about for Dallas. Whether it's three, four or five quarterbacks picked ahead of them, anything that allows the son of the Dolphins' three-time Pro Bowler to end up in Dallas playing opposite former teammate Trevon Diggs is a winner.
We know where Dallas' needs are and we know the Cowboys don't like to spend big dollars on their secondary. That means maintaining a young group of starters, and one would have to think Diggs and Surtain would be the best the club has had since both Terence Newman and Mike Jenkins were picked for the Pro Bowl in 2009.
I know some of you want the Cowboys to take a quarterback at 10 if the Cowboys fail to sign Prescott to a long-term deal in the next few weeks. Just check the history of first-round quarterbacks who aren't sure things named Elway, Aikman and Luck. Let others waste picks and make those mistakes.
I wouldn't put a penny's worth of stock in the idea that Russell Wilson is going to solve Dallas' weird quarterback issues. Just embrace the fact that Mel Kiper Jr. is offering up a path for the top draft-eligible cornerback in the country to slide right into a starting spot on new coordinator Dan Quinn's depth chart.