Why Won't Cowboys Sign Comeback-Minded Ex Chiefs Safety Eric Berry?
FRISCO - In a perfect football world, Eric Berry would not again be entering another NFL season shopping his services. The All-Pro safety would somehow, someway, be playing today in Super Bowl LIV in Miami, leading his Kansas City Chiefs into conflict with the San Francisco 49ers.
In a Dallas Cowboys version of a perfect football world? He would've followed up last spring's visit here to Frisco with a fair contract and, given his Hall-of-Fame-caliber skills, maybe he would've elevated Dallas above their failed 8-8 campaign in 2019.
Unfortunately for Berry, though, there was no perfect world available. And given the reasons for Dallas passing on him last spring (despite a visit that was impressive in one way) and then passing again in the summer time, one would have to be a Berry-loving optimist to predict a change back to perfection in 2020.
Our buddy Mike Garafolo does a great job visiting with Berry to create a report that includes this comment from the NFL Network ace regarding Berry's 2020 comeback intentions: "He took a sabbatical. He wanted to make sure he could get himself right mentally and physically.''
Problem: While Berry is an impressive person (Dallas enjoyed its "Right-Kind-of-Guy'' interview with him) with an impressive backstory that includes him beating Hodgkin lymphoma, what the Cowboys saw of him in their visit, physically and medically, did not allow the justification to sign him.
And when training camp rolled around, and he was still on the street, NFL Network suggested the Cowboys could be "in the mix'' for free agent Berry? Two sources informed CowboysSI.com that the information was incorrect; the club had no interest in yet another look at the former All-Pro safety.
This is a never-say-never business, and Berry is only 31. He was the fifth-overall pick in the 2010 NFL Draft and he went on to make five Pro Bowls. Berry has incredible skins on the wall, with a career that puts him on the same plane with Earl Thomas, the future Hall-of-Famer who Dallas famously flirted with for over a year.
A healthy Berry could've helped Dallas. But instead they pegged journeyman George Iloka, who ended up not staying long, leaving a safety group led by Jeff Heath and Xavier Woods to underperform. There is no indication that anything has changed vastly from when Berry visited the Cowboys back in March for a session that was very much about checking out his medicals and giving him a physical.
It is hoped things have changed for Eric Berry, who clearly wishes to play in the NFL ... but along with hope comes a reminder than this is not a perfect football world.
