Cowboys listed as betting favorite on one site to be WR Tyreek Hill’s next team

Offseason rumors are once again a thing.

Does the NFL betting market know something about the Cowboys offseason plans that we don’t? This is the question just days into the unceremonious start of said offseason for the Cowboys, arriving here by missing the playoffs with a 7-10 record and ending the year on a two-game losing streak. Dallas has serious work to do ahead of them to overhaul a roster that went from winning 12 games each year from 2021-23, but faced season-long flaws compiled by a rash of injuries that made 2024 a lost year.

For what feels like the hundredth time in the last few seasons, wide receiver is yet again a position the Cowboys can seemingly get the most bang for their buck and lift to their viability as a playoff contender with an upgrade. According to Sports Betting AG, they are currently the favorite to be Tyreek Hill’s next team.

The Cowboys are narrow favorites over the Raiders, Falcons, Bills, and Patriots at the moment. Including the Cowboys, all of these teams outside of Buffalo missed the playoffs this season. The Raiders fired head coach Antonio Pierce after just one season (after an interim stint the year before) because of this, wanting to get a new head coach in place before restarting their search for a franchise QB. Whoever that QB may be, they will have record-breaking TE Brock Bowers going into just his second season in 2025, and pairing him with Hill would help Las Vegas embrace the mentality of their new home city and get back to putting on a show offensively.

The Falcons saw a late-season spark from rookie quarterback Michael Penix, but still left them short of the playoffs, losing out on the NFC South for the fourth straight year to the Buccaneers despite winning both head-to-head matchups. Penix’s ability to throw the deep ball was one of his best traits as a prospect out of Washington, and connecting with Hill while also having Bijan Robinson out of the backfield would equally give Atlanta a full complement of weapons on offense.

Lastly, the Patriots became yet another team to fire a first-year head coach in Jerod Mayo, with owner Robert Kraft being very vocal about how poorly the team has drafted putting Mayo in an “untenable” situation. New England’s most glaring need has been at the skill positions for far too long now. The Patriots have drafted six receivers over the last four years, but were still led in receptions and receiving yards by tight end Hunter Henry in quarterback Drake Maye’s rookie season. They have not had a WR eclipse 1,000 yards since Julian Edelman in 2019, which was Tom Brady’s last season. The opportunity to keep Hill within the AFC East is certainly something they should be interested in.

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Again with the exception of the Bills, the Cowboys being favorited to land Hill may be a testament to their quarterback situation over the other struggling teams mentioned here. Hill’s frustrations in Miami after missing the playoffs for the first time in his three seasons there have boiled over into the star WR boldly claiming he has played his last down for the Dolphins despite still having two years left on his contract and a $26.9 million cap hit in 2025. Even when the Dolphins were in the playoffs with Hill, their reliance on big plays in the passing game as the only phase they prioritize enough to compete was stymied by drawing cold weather games away from south Florida. In last year’s loss to Hill’s former team the Chiefs, the former KC Super Bowl champion was held to five catches for 62 yards. The Dolphins were eliminated in the Wild Card round for the second straight year, and left searching for their first playoff win since 2000, the longest active streak in the league that will carry over into next year.

This season, Hill’s 959 receiving yards were the fewest he’s had in a full season played since his 2016 rookie year. His six touchdowns also match a career low from 2016, and catching passes from four different quarterbacks as the Dolphins turned to Tyler Huntley, Skylar Thompson, and Tim Boyle when Tua Tagovailoa was unavailable doesn’t help the overall situation either.

The Cowboys current situation with Dak Prescott is far from perfect, as he will go into 2025 off another season-ending injury and still with everything to prove in living up to becoming the highest-paid player in NFL history this past offseason. The closest the Cowboys have ever come to being taken seriously as a real contender under Prescott is when they’ve loaded up at WR though, and pairing Hill with CeeDee Lamb would certainly accomplish this. Dallas showed flashes in the final game of the season started by Trey Lance of secondary receivers like Jalen Tolbert, Jalen Brooks, and even return man KaVontae Turpin making plays, but cannot go into the 2025 season expecting this committee approach around Lamb to yield the results they’ll expect from Prescott in the pass game.

The early offseason tea leaves are all pointing to head coach and offensive play-caller Mike McCarthy returning, and with that the Cowboys ability to make big plays on this side of the ball will rightfully be scrutinized. Lamb and Hill would give the Cowboys two dynamic players with the run-after-catch ability and raw game-breaking skill to finally be a formidable opponent to scout against, something that hasn’t been said nearly often enough about them in comparison to the resources they’ve allocated on offense.

Still, for Dallas to be flat out favorites at the moment to land Hill is a major surprise. It is well understood within the fanbase that this is simply not the type of move this team will typically make, and Stephen Jones put the idea in fan’s heads early that this will be another status quo “tight” offseason for the Cowboys.

When considering the long list of contributors from this past season set to hit unrestricted free agency, things are already setting up nicely for the Cowboys front office to do what they’ve done over and over again and sell retaining their own talent as actually upgrading the roster. Running back Rico Dowdle, wide receiver Brandin Cooks, quarterbacks Trey Lance and Cooper Rush, offensive linemen Chuma Edoga and Zack Martin, defensive linemen DeMarcus Lawrence, Carl Lawson, Osa Odighizuwa, Chauncey Golston, Carlos Watkins, and Linval Joseph, linebacker Eric Kendricks, and cornerback Jourdan Lewis are all key players that will need a new contract to continue playing for America’s Team.

On one hand, this makes the idea of adding Tyreek HIll to the books a hard one to believe. On the other, wide receiver is the position the Cowboys most recently made a splash trade, albeit back in 2018 with Amari Cooper. The result was saving a season that seemed destined to finish outside the playoffs just like the 2024 Cowboys, and winning the NFC East instead. The Cowboys finished a distant third to the Eagles and Commanders in their own division this year thanks in large part to not having the firepower either of these teams had offensively, so it’s within reason to say Hill is a big enough chip to change the dynamic of who should be favorites to win the NFC East in 2025 – a division with an active streak of not having a repeat winner in 21 years.

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Current players publicly recruiting others from around the league to join their respective teams is nothing new, and it will come as no surprise if this continues in a big way with Hill should the Dolphins be unable to mend the relationship at all. Cowboys star pass rusher Micah Parsons beat the rest of the league to this punch on Monday though, tweeting that Hill should consider joining the Cowboys to become the fastest duo in the league. Of course, Parsons and Hill wouldn’t be able to put their speed to the test on the field at the same time, but Hill, Lamb, and as a true third WR Tolbert, all could. This trio would give McCarthy’s offense, built around creating short completions that can go for bigger gains after the catch and getting the ball out of a QBs hands, a real shot to have a bounce-back year.

It may not feel like it after the Cowboys just finished 2-6 at home, but this is a Dallas team still just a year removed from going undefeated at AT&T Stadium in the regular season and lighting up scoreboards on a weekly basis in the process. With the benefit of an extra home game on the schedule next season, the Cowboys could do well to get back to these winning ways at home in similar fashion thanks to Hill.

Hill may come with some off-field baggage and be a large personality for the Cowboys locker room to take on, but for the moment his public gripe with the Dolphins is that missing the playoffs and not seeing a path forward to contention is the main reason he wants out. This is a player that started his career being the top receiver for a QB that’s catapulted himself into the all-time great discussion with Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. Simply put, the Cowboys need more players with Hill’s apparent stance on the importance of playing their best football in the postseason, and it doesn’t hurt at all that his skill set is tailor made to fill a major void in Dallas.

With the sheer amount of things that felt broken beyond repair for the 2024 Cowboys, it should be considered a gift from the football gods that a potential fix to one of their biggest issues at wide receiver is apparently available on the trade market. This team must find some way – any way at all, really – to publicly prove they’ve learned some of the lessons of why this past season was a failure in the offseason. Making a big splash at a position of need to directly help a player they’ve already made a franchise commitment to at QB would be a massive way to accomplish this.