Interesting development a little before the Cowboys draft.
On Wednesday it was reported by ESPN that San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel wants to be traded away from the team that ended the season for the Dallas Cowboys last year.
Samuel is one of the more versatile players in the entire league as his prowess extends beyond the conventional wide receiver position and into the backfield. He is the embodiment of ‘just give him the ball and watch him make plays’ coming to life.
Given Samuel’s importance to the 49ers roster, many have felt that he is next in line for a big payday. Receivers like Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill have gotten new market-setting deals with teams after being traded away by their former squads, the world that the Jacksonville Jaguars created when they signed Christian Kirk is an expensive one.
Deebo Samuel has dropped a social media breadcrumb connecting him to the Dallas Cowboys
In the immediate aftermath of the trade rumor, NFL Network reported that the New York Jets (who missed out on Tyreek Hill), Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, and Kansas City Chiefs were among the interested parties in Samuel. They also reported that part of why Samuel wants out of San Francisco is an issue with how he is utilized there.
While all of these reports were flying around, Deebo Samuel seemingly took issues into his own hands the way that he does on the actual football field. He liked a tweet from a user that suggested he would look good with a star on his helmet that included a photoshopped image of Samuel in a Cowboys uniform.
It is sort of the thing for players looking to get paid to connect themselves to the Cowboys as a point of leverage. Dallas is America’s Team after all. Just this offseason we have seen Von Miller and Bobby Wagner get big deals with new teams after being connected to the Cowboys, you could also throw Za’Darius Smith into that mix as well (not to mention Stefon Diggs getting a new deal in Buffalo after his younger brother Trevon tweeted that it would be fun for them to link up together in Dallas).
With the 2022 NFL Draft about a week away, it stands to reason that Samuel could be moved very quickly so that the 49ers could use whatever compensation that they would get for him; however, it feels unlikely that Dallas would be the team involved given the package it would take to get Samuel as well as the new contract that he would likely need on top of that.