“I ain’t played football since preseason. If y’all was in my shoes… why would you go out there and not show up and show out?” Joe Milton growled after his lone 2024 Patriots appearance—a 241-yard, two-TD mic drop that had New England fans side-eyeing Drake Maye. Fast-forward to 2025, and the 6’5”, 246-pound QB with a rocket launcher for an arm is now in Dallas, where Dak Prescott’s hamstrings have more plot twists than Succession’s Logan Roy.

The trade? New England shipped Milton and a seventh-round pick to the Cowboys for a fifth, a move that, as Mike Florio  reported, “wasn’t a coincidence.” Chris Simms broke it down: “They wanted to get this done before the offseason program started… there’s concern that maybe Milton could be as good as Drake Maye, and it was going to be an impediment potentially to Maye developing into the guy they need him to be.” Translation? Milton was too talented to be left lingering behind the chosen third-overall pick.

“They didn’t want that conversation—anything influencing anything bad on Drake Maye,” Simms added. Let’s break it down: Milton, a sixth-rounder, is cheaper than a Whataburger combo ($4.2M over four years) and hungrier than a Texas linebacker.

Meanwhile, Prescott’s still the $52M cap hit nursing a surgically-repaired hamstring after missing six games last year. That’s on top of a career résumé that includes a fractured ankle, thumb surgery, and enough bruises to make a Grey’s Anatomy intern faint. Milton isn’t some clipboard cosplayer. His 92-yard TD bomb in college and 75.9% completion rate in his NFL debut scream ‘hold my Gatorade.’

As Simms put it, “Dallas is taking a swing… so they’re not cornered by Dak’s agent again to have to pay him way more money than he should.” The Cowboys already made Trey Lance a reclamation project. Now, it’s Milton’s turn. “Joe Milton seems like a little bit of a swing for the fences,” Simms continued. “If there was a guy that could become a backup and become a starter and like—like almost star, like ‘Whoa, wow!’ type things—Joe Milton is that guy.”

But the question is looming: Why did the Pats part ways with Milton?

Patriots’ ‘Maye day’ drama: Why New England ditched Milton

Still, let’s not crown him Prescott’s heir just yet. The veteran QB has three Pro Bowls, 31,437 career yards, and a contract that locks him in for three more years. But after Dallas’s 7–10 collapse—fueled by a defense leakier than a screen door on a submarine—Milton’s “I think I’m as good as Drake Maye” energy is the kind of spice that either fuels a quarterback controversy or gets you benched faster than The Office’s Todd Packer.

Simms noted, “He holds himself in the facility like, ‘Hey, I think I’m as good as Drake Maye, or if not better.’ And that’s awesome—but not every organization wants that kind of talk in the locker room.” So why Dallas?

Well, maybe because the Cowboys aren’t looking for Milton to start tomorrow. “He’s probably not ready to play quite yet,” Simms said. “But he can make throws that only a few people in football can make.” It’s the “other stuff”—reads, consistency, leadership—that Dallas hopes to mold in the background.

And maybe, just maybe, Jerry Jones wants a viable Plan B. “They have a guy now who can play if and when Prescott gets hurt,” Simms added. “And he’s got, as quarterbacks go, an injury history that is almost up there with Tua Tagovailoa’s.”

As for New England? Their quarterback room was beginning to resemble Succession—Milton as the rogue Kendall Roy, threatening to outshine the family-favored Maye. So they booted Milton like a bad Tinder date. “They might appreciate the competition, but it’s not the best quarterback organization around,” Simms admitted.

And one can’t help but wonder. Did the Patriots deliberately ship Milton out of the AFC to avoid a future PR nightmare? Simms mused, “What other offers did the Patriots have for Joe Milton? And did they take less. Just to send him to Dallas? They’d have no reason to admit that. Because that feeds into the narrative that they gave up a guy who could have been something… Just to protect Maye.”

So here we are. Milton’s mother is a lifelong Cowboys fan. Prescott is 33 pounds lighter. And Jerry World? It’s a powder keg. One twitch in Prescott’s hamstring and AT&T Stadium will be chanting Milton’s name louder than “How ‘bout them Cowboys?” Simms even ranked him above Russell Wilson in a hypothetical QB depth chart: “I would love to have Milton on the team as a future. Whoa! he could be a star down the road type of thing.”

In the end, Milton might be the NFL’s version of a late-round lottery ticket with cannon fire in his veins. A future starter? A flameout? Or maybe just a well-timed insurance policy in a league where quarterbacks drop like Game of Thrones extras. Whatever the case, the Cowboys got him for a fifth-rounder. And in this economy, that’s worth more than a golden cowboy hat.

Mic drop.