Michael Irvin Talks His Netflix Podcast, Cowboys Hype & More I Full Interview I The Rich Eisen Show

Michael Irvin arrived fresh off a plane, fully lotioned, and immediately explained why. "I try to keep all white things away from me, especially dust on my legs." The only person in the building with lotion on hand was TJ Jefferson, which Rich correctly identified as a fantasy team name waiting to happen.

That set up the actual origin story of Irvin's Netflix show, which is better than anyone expected and, in his telling, entirely theological.

The name is The White House. Irvin knows exactly what he did. "Anytime I get near anything white, the comments start flying." But he framed the decision as scripture rather than trolling. "The Bible said that what the devil meant for evil, God will make it good. At the time you go through it, it may be bad, but if you just hold on, sooner or later that thing's going to turn and flip."

The turn, in this case, was data. After the documentary, Irvin said, The White House became the most searched term in the history of Netflix. So he took the thing that had been used against him and put his name on it. And then the checks started arriving.

"Every time I take that check home, it says The White House. I said, damn, he made it good."

Before the football, Irvin wanted to give Dana White his due, since White was joining later. Their relationship goes back further than most people realize. "Dana used to bring me to Vegas to speak to his fighters. When I came across and got good, he brought me in to speak to his fighters."

Rich noted that this is a pattern. He asked Irvin to speak at his daughter's baby naming three days after she was born, a child who was just bat mitzvahed. And years ago in Munich, Pete Carroll asked Irvin to break down a Seahawks practice, which produced the reaction you would expect from a roomful of players who did not know it was coming.

Then Rich played a clip of Brian Schottenheimer being asked who he would call out of retirement, and Schottenheimer named Irvin on the spot, adding that you can never have enough good receivers.

Irvin was genuinely moved by it, and then used the moment to make a bigger point about the head coaching hire he initially questioned. "I said a whole lot of things even when we were trying to make this decision," he admitted, because his position had been that Dallas needed an outsider to change the culture.

His view now is that Schottenheimer did exactly that, and from an angle Irvin did not anticipate. "An outsider came in to show everybody how blessed you are to be with the Cowboys."

Which brings him to George Pickens, and this is the thread Irvin returned to over and over. Pickens has been somewhere else. He knows what other buildings look like. So when he showed up and committed, it landed differently than it would have from a lifer. "All the other people, you've never been other places, so you're spoiled with this. But the decision George Pickens made, I think is a galvanizing decision. A decision that says, oh, we must really have something great if he can go through that."

The leadership reports are real, too. Rich raised the example everyone in Dallas is repeating, from the joint practices with the Rams, where Cowboys players were running sprints on their own afterward while Rams players watched and enjoyed it. Pickens told them to keep their eyes on their own team.

Irvin also had a first-hand account of how Schottenheimer builds that, and it is not a speech. It is a basketball hoop. Alumni get brought in for team meetings, and the morning routine now includes players shooting free throws with 30 seconds on the clock while the entire room screams at them.

Irvin recognized the mechanic instantly, because he lived it. "Winning football is about making great plays late under pressure. He's creating all of those moments." Jimmy Johnson used to do the same thing, running the clock down with the whole team surrounding the ball, yelling at the kicker. "You can't be out here practicing in the damn quiet. We got to make it difficult so you can get used to difficult, and you can be a real great friend with pressure."

On actually coming out of retirement, Irvin was realistic in a way that is hard to hear. "I got snaps in my heart. I want it, but I ain't no snaps in my knees."

Rich waved a hand and declared the knees fixed, purely to keep the bit alive, then asked whether Irvin would take 88 back from CeeDee Lamb. Irvin refused immediately. The league now lets two players wear the same number, so nobody has to give anything up.

Rich's counter-suggestion, that Irvin wear his college number, landed better. Irvin lit up. "I would go to 47." His only concern was that Dallas does not protect 47 the way it protects 88, so somebody might already have it.

But if the real question is which player from the past he would bring back, Irvin does not think it is a receiver at all. His first answer was Charles Haley, for the pass rush, on the theory that the Cowboys are locked and loaded at his own position. Then he changed his mind live, and got significantly louder.

"Deion Sanders. That's who I would really go get."

His reasoning was structural. The back end is the Cowboys' actual worry. Put Prime on that corner with this front, and "it's over." He is high on the young safety Dallas added to shore it up, and reached for the comparison that means the most to him. The kid reminds him of Darren Woodson, which turned into a brief, sincere detour about how underrated Woodson's coverage was and the fact that he belongs in the Hall of Fame.

Rich then raised the thing that hangs over every Dallas preseason, which is that Jerry Jones sells a contender every summer, and some years it is PT Barnum. His read this year is different, and he said so plainly. It feels real, on both sides of the ball, with a defense he considers 100 percent improved.

Irvin agreed, and added a bit of schedule math nobody else was doing. The NFC East will be tough, but the NFC West is brutal and those teams have to keep playing each other. "I don't expect all three of those difficult teams in the NFC West to come out of there totally healthy. So it may help Dallas in some way."

Then he named the thing he thinks matters most, and it goes back to attendance. Because everyone was in camp together, the offense had time to build something, and what they built is a phrase. The goal is to be the greatest offense there is.

"Nobody was together coming up making a plan with what they're going to do this year," Irvin said of previous seasons, when the roster was still assembling into September because someone was holding out. This time they sealed it into their own brains early. His conviction about why that matters comes straight from playing. "It's going to become a fourth quarter and it's going to be a tough time, and I got to look across that huddle and say, what the hell did we talk about? Let's go right now."

Which is why he keeps singing Pickens' praises. "He made this possible."

Rich, who has spent two decades learning exactly how to wind Irvin up and roll him downhill, then produced the Cowboys schedule.

Irvin took the Giants on Sunday night, with a caveat about none of the starters having played in the preseason, and a requirement that Pickens and Lamb control the game early with big plays. He took Washington. He took the Ravens in Rio, and was explicit that location decided it. "If that game was in Baltimore, I would worry."

Houston handed him his first loss. Then Tampa Bay, then Green Bay with Micah Parsons expected back, before Philadelphia on Monday night, where he refused to commit. "I have to put a may. I can't ever say they will."

Arizona, Indianapolis and a home game against San Francisco all went Dallas' way, that last one carrying a message. Beat the 49ers and "you let them know, come on back in here during the playoffs, we gonna do it again."

Tennessee, then Philadelphia at home on Thanksgiving, which he split from the road game on purpose. They beat the Eagles at home and lose to them away.

Seattle got the second loss, and the reason was pure Jimmy Johnson. There is a bye week after it, and Irvin has seen what happens when a team starts thinking about the bye before it arrives.

Coming off that bye, he took Dallas over the Rams, and framed it as reconnaissance. "A taste of where you're going to come back to get your Lombardi trophy." Rich translated it as measuring for drapes and picking the spot to stand when the confetti falls, and Irvin did not object.

Jacksonville, then the loss he was most interested in explaining, at home to the Giants in Week 17. His argument is that the Giants in December will not resemble the Giants in September. "That Harbaugh stuff will have been taking root, and they got the talent and they got the mentality in New York." With Jaxson Dart and Cam Skattebo and a roster getting healthy, "that's going to be a tough team to beat."

Washington closed it out, and Irvin landed on 13 and 4. He also wanted credit for method. "I didn't just throw wins. I gave you how this thing will play out."

Rich, doing the arithmetic on the shape of it, noted a five-game win streak collapsing in Seattle and then a home loss to the Giants in Week 17, and observed that the resulting first Monday of 2027 would produce quite a First Take. Irvin agreed it would be a party.

He does not play fantasy football, and never has. "I'm only doing real football." He does appreciate what it has done for the audience. Rich's observation, which Irvin conceded instantly, is that Jerry Jones runs the Cowboys like a fantasy team, since no other owner picks the players. Irvin's amendment was that the payment is where the real control lives. "They may pick the player, but he's got to make a decision to pay the player."

On whether Dallas trades for Maxx Crosby midseason, Irvin surprised the room by saying he is not sure they need to, and his reasons were things he witnessed in person. Rashan Gary grabbed him at practice and Irvin genuinely did not know what had hold of him. "He felt like Bruce Banner. That dude was so strong." And on his first day at practice, Von Miller went straight to the young players and started teaching.

He was careful not to be misread. "I love Maxx Crosby. I would love to have Maxx Crosby on my team." The question is sequencing. "Is it a good move now, or do you keep the resources and keep adding on later? I want to see what this defense does before I throw more resources at it."

A caller named Kenya from Washington, DC checked in as a hostile witness, disappointed in Rich for picking the Cowboys to win the NFC East and confident the Eagles thrive as underdogs. Irvin countered with a story about an Eagles fan following him through a store singing Fly Eagles Fly, and a promise. "We're clipping all Fly Eagles Fly wings this year."

That led somewhere better. Asked what it was like facing those Eagles when Reggie White arrived, Irvin offered the only historical comparison he thinks holds up for Aaron Donald and Myles Garrett on one line.

"The closest thing tantamount to what we're going to see with Aaron Donald and Myles Garrett was Reggie White and Jerome Brown." Two completely different kinds of problem on the same front, talent-wise and fear-wise.

Then he told the part that makes it real. "I've seen grown men back out of games because those dudes were on the field. Grown men." Someone would ask where the injury was. Irvin swears he heard a lineman answer, "Somewhere in here."

His diagnosis was better than the story. "I can't identify what's in me hurting. I can identify who's going to hurt me if I get on that field."

Rich raised the counterpoint, that the rest of the league is listening to everyone declare the Rams unbeatable and getting angry about it. Irvin allowed that the disrespect angle works right up until the film goes on. He also had a tactical note for Dallas, which draws Donald in Week 15. Irvin would rather have gotten him early. "Before he gets into that later type shape. If you can get him now, I believe we can take care of him and you can double team Myles Garrett. But later, that's going to be a different thing."

The trolling arms race between TJ Jefferson and Carl Anthony Towns also came up, and it has escalated beyond reason. During the Eagles' championship run, Towns sent balloons and flowers in Eagles colors every week. After the Super Bowl, he sent a mariachi band to play Fly Eagles Fly. He then called to ask whether he could send in a choir of roughly 50 people, which the show could not accommodate. Irvin's assessment was professional admiration. "That's good stuff right there."

O'Shea Jackson Jr., on set alongside, got asked about following his father, and gave the most pointed answer of the hour. He auditioned for two years to get Straight Outta Compton after leaving college and dedicating himself to acting. Then the reception arrived pre-written. "When I got it, it was just talk about nepotism. And then when the movie comes out and I kill it, they say, oh, well, of course he could play his dad." His response to the contradiction was a rule. "I told my team every role I take has to be different from the last one, so they can't put me in a box." Which is how you end up in Cocaine Bear, a film he defended as art while noting, for the record, that he did not die in it. He lost two fingers.

The most-to-prove conversation came in through the phones, when Nathan in Chicago objected that Josh Allen was missing from Rich's list.

Rich corrected the framing first, because it matters. The list was most to prove, not most pressure, and his question was direct. What does Josh Allen have to prove? In Rich's view, Allen has already demonstrated he can carry a team deep into the playoffs and is a quarterback you would want if you intend to reach a Super Bowl. Getting there and getting back is simply hard.

His actual list runs through quarterbacks in genuinely unsettled situations. Tua Tagovailoa and Michael Penix Jr. He put Jayden Daniels fifth, and admitted the placement was diplomatic. "I made him number five just because I didn't want to piss him off." Then Malik Willis, Deshaun Watson and Kyler Murray.

He defended each one. Murray has to prove he can run a franchise a second time, now with weapons and with Kevin O'Connell in his ear rather than Jonathan Gannon. Willis has to prove he can run a team. Daniels has to prove year one was the real him and year two was the injuries.

Irvin took the other side, and built a case that reframed the whole exercise. He put it on Allen and Lamar Jackson, and his evidence was organizational rather than statistical. "They got those coaches out of there. Both defensive coaches." Two enormously gifted quarterbacks, two coaches who wanted to win with defense, years of late-game friction, and now those coaches are gone.

"You let go two great coaches. We putting it on you."

He also separated the two kinds of proving, which is the sharpest distinction anyone drew. "There's, do I need to prove that I can do it, and I need to prove some people need to prove that I can do it at the highest levels to be considered one of the greats of this game." His concern is retrospective. Look back at Lamar and Josh in twenty years and the Super Bowl question becomes the whole conversation.

On Dak Prescott, Irvin was unequivocal that yes, there is something to prove, and he brought a first-hand answer. He sat down with Prescott at Cowboys camp and asked how much of the franchise's 30-year drought he carries personally. "He says the last 11. As long as he's been there. That's all he can carry."

The Lamar discussion got the most personal. Irvin believes Jackson feels enormous pressure precisely because of the identity he built. "He wanted to be the one that was supposed to prove to the world that a quarterback that can run can win the Super Bowl." Jalen Hurts got there first, and Irvin thinks Jackson watched that specific dream go. He pointed back to Jackson entering the league saying he was a running back, arguing it was a setup for a trophy moment that has not come. And he named where he thinks the weight comes from. "If you feel pressure from anybody, you for sure got to feel pressure from the Black community. We need to see you get there."

Rich pushed back hard, and the disagreement was a good one. His position is that Jackson does not feel an ounce of pressure, he simply wants to win, and that he has proven he is as good as they come. He also noted the obvious counterexample to ring-based legacy. "There's a lot of ringless individuals in that room in Ohio as well."

Irvin's concession was partial. "The ring is part of the conversation at the end of the day. How many have you won?" Rich agreed that is always a legitimate conversation.

For Super Bowl 61, Irvin went with alliteration and conviction. Denver against Dallas, in Los Angeles. The Cowboys get there by beating the Rams in the NFC Championship game, which by his own 13 and 4 projection would be played in Dallas.

His final point was one he was proud of the show for, and it was about the team nobody had mentioned all hour. The Chiefs. "Everybody's been talking about wait until Patrick Mahomes gets back. I'm saying stop saying that. Patrick Mahomes was there last year. He was only out the one game."

Before he left, Irvin plugged the work. The Cowboys episode of The White House drops next week on Netflix and YouTube, following the Chargers one. And Fetching Fletchers is on YouTube, with Linda Fletcher having earned a title in the studio that afternoon. Rich proposed the Fletcher Cruiser, in honor of the Madden Cruiser, and both men took a moment for the man it is named after.