Which NFC East Rival QB did Dallas Cowboys consider drafting to play behind Dak Prescott?

Jalen Hurts is the franchise quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles.

He is coming off a season in which he led the Eagles to the Super Bowl and finished second in NFL MVP voting.

Hurts was rewarded with five-year, $255 million deal, which averages $51 million year, the third highest-paid player in the NFL.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said he had considered a scenario in which Hurts would have been a backup to Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott.

In explaining his decision to acquire former first-round pick Trey Lance in a trade from the San Francisco 49ers, Jones said the Cowboys had been looking for a developmental quarterback in the draft for the last three years.

“If he had hung around long enough we might’ve done this on the Philadelphia quarterback about two years ago,” Jones said.

Jones got his years wrong as the Eagles made picked Hurts in the second round in the 2020 NFL Draft. But he was adamant about the player and the possibility.

“I just told you, two years ago we were looking at the Philadelphia quarterback, I don’t want to call any names, but we were looking at him, had he fallen to us there, we would have drafted him,” Jones said.

The truth is the Cowboys passed on Hurts twice in 2020. They took receiver CeeDee Lamb, who was Hurts’ teammate at Oklahoma in the first round at 17th overall.

The Cowboys took cornerback Trevon Diggs in the second round with the 51st pick, two slots before the Eagles took Hurts at 53.

Later that season, vice president Stephen Jones spoke of the team’s interest in Hurts on his radio show on 105.3 The Fan before a game between the Cowboys and Eagles.

“We looked at him really hard,” Jones said then. “Obviously, our guy is Dak (Prescott), but at the same time, (Coach) Mike (McCarthy) is a big proponent of continuing to look at quarterback. We certainly had interest in (Hurts) …”

The question is what round would their potential interest in Hurts been realized.

With Prescott playing on the franchise tag and no one knowing that Hurts would develop into a potential Super Bowl quarterback, there is little chance the Cowboys would have taken a quarterback in the second or third round.

And if they had taken him and he played as a rookie, especially with Prescott missing the final 11 games with a fracture ankle, what impact would that have had on the Cowboys signing Prescott to a four-year, $160 million contract in March of 2021?

Now, there is a question of what Lance’s presence and potential development will have on the team’s negotiations with Prescott on a long-term contract extension.

As of now, Lance is a developmental third quarterback in Dallas, just as Hurts would have been had they drafted him in 2020 behind Prescott and Andy Dalton.