Tim Brown says Michael Irvin didn’t want him as a Cowboys’ teammate

Michael Irvin kept Tim Brown from trying to return home to play for the Cowboys when Brown was a free agent in 1994.

Brown, who played at Dallas Woodrow Wilson High School, proposed to Irvin the idea of playing together with the Cowboys when the two were at the Pro Bowl. Brown said Irvin “boisterously declined.”

“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.”

Brown signed a four-year, $11 million deal with the Broncos in March 1994 that the Raiders matched. Brown ended up playing 16 of his 17 seasons with the Raiders, making 1,094 catches for 14,934 yards and 100 touchdowns in his career.

Irvin was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007 after making 750 catches for 11,904 yards and 65 touchdowns in his 12-year career in Dallas.

Alvin Harper was the Cowboys’ second-leading wideout in 1994, the year Dallas lost to San Francisco in the NFC Championship game. Harper made 33 catches for 821 yards and eight touchdowns that season before leaving for Tampa Bay in free agency. Brown had 89 receptions for 1,309 yards and 77 touchdowns in ’94.


(star-telegram.com)