We’ve heard Tim Brown talk about how he once considered leaving the Raiders to join the Cowboys. It obviously never happened and now he’s saying why it never happened. Michael Irvin didn’t want him there.
According to the Star-Telegram, Brown approached Irvin in the offseason of his free agency in 1994 and told him he was considering a return home (Brown was from Dallas) and signing with the Cowboys. Irvin apparently wasn’t having any of it. Here’s the exchange as Brown told it to the Star-Telegram’s Charean Williams:
I think it was the first year I made the Pro Bowl as a receiver, and I was a free agent going into that offseason, the offseason of ’94, and I ended up signing with the Broncos,” Brown said in a Pro Football Hall of Fame conference call Thursday. “I sort of happily walked up to Michael thinking it was going to be a great concept, and I said to him, ‘Hey, man, look, man, I’m thinking about coming home to Dallas. I would love to come there and be No. 2 to you.’ He got so upset. ‘Tim Brown, don’t you ever think about coming….’ I was like, ‘Mike, man, what’s going on?’ He was like, ‘No. I’m glad you told me first. I’m calling Jerry right now and telling him don’t do it.’ So that was pretty much the end of that conversation, and I was a little upset, because I did want to come home, and I wanted to play for the Cowboys. I’m glad that worked out the way it did for many reasons at this particular point. But yeah, that is a true story.