NFL Draft 2025: How Cowboys’ first-round pick Tyler Booker reminds Jerry Jones of Michael Irvin

FRISCO, Texas — Alabama Crimson Tide All-American offensive guard Tyler Booker, the 12th overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys, hasn’t been a Cowboy for even a week. 

However, he already has both All-Pro edge Micah Parsons and Dallas owner and general manager Jerry Jones ready to run through a brick wall after each have heard him speak. Parsons interviewed Booker on Bleacher Report’s NFL Draft live reaction show shortly after the latter was selected by Dallas. After he heard Booker talking about making his opponents lose their love of football while going against him, he got Parsons screaming, “God damn, you just got me hype! Let’s go! Hey man, welcome to the team!”

Jones had an equivalent reaction — as much as an 82-year-old can have to Parsons’ fiery reaction — while sitting next to Booker at his introductory press conference Friday afternoon. He likened Booker’s leadership qualities and energy to Pro Football Hall of Fame Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin. Jones waxed poetic about Irvin inspiring fellow Dallas wide receiver Alvin Harper’s 70-yard reception in the Cowboys’ 30-20 NFC Championship game victory in the 1992 season.

“Listening to Tyler, I’m reminded that I don’t know that we ever see a Super Bowl that I would have a chance to be a part of if it weren’t for Michael Irvin,” Jones said on Friday. “Michael, we know the competitor. We know the challenger, and we know the spirit. But the part of Michael Irvin that was most impressive was he was the leader. 

“For instance, when Alvin Harper [made the 70-yard catch] against San Francisco in the NFC Championship game and nobody could believe that play was called. Michael and Alvin Harper were in the huddle together, and Harper got in the spot that Michael might’ve thought he should’ve had because they both thought the ball would go to Harper. Of course, Harper ran 80-something yards right off the goal line. … I was talking to him about that because I’d heard he’d told Alvin, ‘You be a man. Whatever you do, you don’t even think about doing anything but take that thing across the middle. You don’t even hesitate. You grab that ball and you run to the total end. But don’t flinch. We’re all counting on you.’ … The rest is history. [Harper] made the play.”

It was then revealed that Irvin had set that play in motion years earlier by building an off-field connection with Harper.

“Michael later told me, ‘You don’t think that transpired just because we were on the goal line in San Francisco and the huddle there?” Jones said. “He said that started four years ago and he said, ‘You don’t call on each other right at huddle time or right in a game. You put it in a long way back.’ He [Irvin] said Alvin got a call to come talk to his Sertoma club in his hometown, and he was trying to ask me what to say. And I [Irvin] said ‘How would you like for me to go with you to your hometown, Alvin, and I’ll go down there with you and we’ll both go to the Sertoma club?’ He [Irvin] said you have to put that in sometime years before you call on it in a football game.”

At the conclusion of that story, Jones turned to Booker who was sitting next to him and lauded the 21-year-old for possessing the “same” type of leadership juice and ability. 

“That’s looking around the corner. That’s awareness. This boy’s got it now. Same stuff,” Jones said. “They’re different now, obviously. But looking around the corner, leadership, thinking ahead, what’s it going to take to win one of these things.” 

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The next day at the Cowboys’ end-of-draft press conference, Jones couldn’t help but compare Booker to Irvin once again, labeling both of their energies as simply electric and “contagious.” Safe to say Dallas is convinced it has a cornerstone player on its offensive line for many years to come.  

“You better watch out if you see a consensus or you see an agreement,” Jones said. “Whoever’s looked at him [Booker] — coaches, scouts, what have you — and they look and say, ‘God knows this guy just, shit, he just causes you to feel funny around him.’ He just has got some energy, or he’s like that. That’s real stuff. That really is real, and these guys look for it.”

“That’s an energy in that room right there that can be very contagious. Again, I compared it to Michael [Irvin]. Well, they’re world’s apart in what they fundamentally are with their lives and that type of thing. But one thing about Michael Irvin now, boy, if you touched him, you popped him, your clothes sparked if you touched on Michael. I’m being overly demonstrative here, but that’s worth looking for in football players, and people have that.”