NEW YORK — Jerry Jones won’t hire Deion Sanders as the Dallas Cowboys’ next head coach.

At least no one will believe it until Sanders puts pen to paper and high-steps back into The Star.

That’s because while Jones loves publicity, he and the ’Boys like control even more.

They like the appearance of being Wild West Cowboys that would recruit a big name like Sanders, even though their track record says they employed Jason Garrett as their head coach for nine years.

Jones caved on the Cowboys’ contract negotiations with Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb after supposedly drawing a hard line. He wavered on what to do with Mike McCarthy rather than just pulling the plug and getting a head start on the coaching search.

None of Jones’ or the Cowboys’ conservative behavior says they would put their money where their mouths are by hiring Sanders and empowering one of the biggest personalities in big sports to implement his program in Texas.

Hiring Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, the Cowboys’ former OC, would be much more on brand for Jones.

He is a young coach still finding his voice who would let Jones and the Cowboys’ brass and players be the stars — a controllable and cheaper commodity who has experience coaching the team’s incumbent quarterback.

Even Pete Carroll, the veteran former USC and Seahawks coach looking for one last hurrah, would more closely fit the Cowboys’ standard operating procedure than Sanders.

Carroll would put a friendly, familiar face on the marquee at AT&T Stadium and enable Dallas to sell winning as the continued priority. And Carroll, 73, probably would be happy enough to land on his feet in such a prominent gig not to rock the boat.

There are a lot of other reasons to doubt that Sanders to the Cowboys would happen.

First, the Cowboys are known to run a pretty loose ship. Players are treated like stars, afforded a lot of freedoms and not often told “no.” If Sanders tried to crack down and bring a new kind of structure to town from Colorado, that might not go as smoothly as one might think just because Sanders once starred as a Cowboy himself.

Second, commanding a college locker room and community and keeping order in an NFL locker room and market are not the same thing. Sanders would not be worshiped in Dallas or the pros like he is in college. He would be put under the microscope like everyone else. How he would react to that environment and lead in it is unknown.

Third, say Sanders did take the job, install his program and become Dallas’ new field general. How would he react to Jones being the primary voice of his team and not him? To Jones overshadowing Sanders’ star? To having less freedom than he grew accustomed to in college?

Sanders seemingly is confident enough in himself to attack all of those challenges head-on. He definitely sounds strongly interested in moving to the NFL.

He said on ‘Good Morning America’ that “the only way I would consider” going to the NFL “is to coach my sons:” quarterback Shedeur Sanders and defensive back Shilo Sanders.

His desire to coach Shedeur in part could explain why he “has a very strong interest” in the Raiders’ head coaching vacancy, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Vegas holds the No. 6 overall pick in April’s NFL draft, which is at least in striking distance to the quarterback-needy top three of Tennessee, Cleveland and the Giants.

The only problem is that the Raiders have “zero interest” in hiring Sanders, per The Athletic. And the Cowboys not only have Prescott on an expensive contract already: they’re also picking much further down at No. 12 overall in April, seeking talent to help them win rather than pieces to rebuild like the Raiders.

For the Giants’ purposes, if Sanders took the Cowboys’ job, they could always trade back from No. 3 overall to give him Shedeur and restock their war-chest with tons of assets. But what sense would that make for a Cowboys team that has more holes to fill than one would think?

Or it could go the other way: the Giants could draft Shedeur Sanders at No. 3 overall, and then if Brian Daboll continued losing, fire Daboll and reunite him and his dad in New York in 2026 during Joe Schoen’s Last Stand (as part of the organization’s new 10-year plan to restore relevance).

Deion Sanders should know, though, if he truly wants the Cowboys job, that McCarthy just put up a 12-5 record in three straight seasons, slipped once to 7-10 and then didn’t have his contract renewed. This isn’t Boulder, Colo.

Not to be overlooked, meanwhile, is Jones’ and the Cowboys’ strange pattern of retaining their fired or outgoing coaches for an extended period of time before letting them out.

They did it with Garrett in January 2020. Garrett lingered in the Cowboys’ building during the final days of his contract while other teams, including the Giants, filled their vacancies. The Giants, who had interest in Garrett for their big chair, ended up hiring him as Joe Judge’s offensive coordinator.

Then this month, Jones dragged McCarthy’s status out as teams, including the Giants, made their own decisions about whether to fire or retain their incumbent coaches — and while others got their interview processes underway.

Has Jones been trying to prevent rivals from hiring his outgoing coaches? Is he simply indecisive?

One part of McCarthy’s timeline that made no sense at all is how Jones let the early window to interview Lions and Chiefs coordinators pass before moving on and creating the vacancy.

Letting McCarthy go, logically, should have meant that Jones and the Cowboys had a top candidate lined up: someone like Detroit offensive coordinator Ben Johnson or an established veteran coach like the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin via trade.

Initially, at least, that does not appear to be the case.

“It suggests that there’s not a real plan,” Hall of Fame former Cowboy Troy Aikman said on ESPN.

Aikman also contended that this is not as attractive a destination for prospective coaches as some might believe.

“To say it’s a coveted job, I’m not sure I’d agree,” he said.

Sanders appears to want the job, at least. So that’d be more interest than most, in Aikman’s eyes.

Still, a phone call to Prime Time and hiring him are two completely different things.

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