Did Dallas Morning News interview foreshadow Troy Aikman’s advisory Miami Dolphins role?

Suddenly, it seems, NFL quarterback greats-turned broadcasters are dominating headlines.

On Saturday morning, within the same hour in which the Falcons named CBS’s Matt Ryan as Director of Football, word emerged that Cowboys icon and ESPN analyst Troy Aikman’s advisory role in Miami will extend to the franchise’s head coach search.

These developments came five days after Fox analyst Tom Brady’s increasing voice as Raiders minority owner reportedly factored into the firing of coach Pete Carroll.

Trendy confluence? It certainly seems that way. Surprising and sudden? Not if you saw and read to the end our November feature about Aikman’s quarter-century broadcasting career and 24-year partnership with Joe Buck.

Aikman was nearing his 59th birthday in November. Still young enough, The News pointed out, for him to fulfil a goal he’d had since late in his playing career: Running an NFL front office.

“I could be, yeah,” Aikman told us.

He called it “far-fetched” that it could happen, noting that the time for him to do so, as a single father, would have been when the younger of his two girls graduated high school in 2021.

But to hear the passion in Aikman’s full answer, if we didn’t know better we’d wonder if Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross tapped that phone conversation, which in a sense foreshadowed what is happening now.

“I think when my days are coming to an end, that will be something I’ll look back on,” he said. “Not in regret that I didn’t do it, but always wonder how I would have done. And I think I would do really well with it, you know?

“I feel strongly in my abilities to put together a team that can compete – or to create a culture that allows people to be at their best. But until you do it, just talking about it is just like everyone else in the world.

“People that can do it, do it. And the people that don’t, talk about it.”

It’s unclear how many days passed between that interview and the Dolphins’ call, but Aikman said Friday during his first 2026 appearance with “The Musers” on Sportsradio 96.7 FM/1310 The Ticket (KTCK-AM) that the team reached out “a few weeks ago.”

Aikman said he dove into the opportunity, studying every facet of the Dolphins’ organization. Later Friday, Miami hired as general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan, who reportedly was Aikman’s preferred candidate. Now comes multiple reports that Aikman will assist Sullivan in the head coach search.

As Aikman and Buck prepare to broadcast Monday night’s Texan-Steelers Wild Card game in Pittsburgh, it’s intriguing to wonder: Is Aikman’s Miami role a way for him to temporarily scratch a decades-old itch? Or might the Dolphins offer a Director of Football-like role, like the Falcons created for Ryan?

There are at least two reasons to believe Aikman wouldn’t accept such an opportunity. One, he’s firmly entrenched in Dallas personally and in his multiple businesses, including EIGHT Elite Lite Beer.

Two, it would require him to resign from ESPN, as Ryan did from CBS on Saturday. The difference is Ryan was making a reported $5M-to-$6M as a studio analyst; whereas Aikman reportedly earns $18.5 annually from the five-year, $92.5M ESPN deal he signed in 2022.

Then again, as Aikman told The News in November: “I’ve always been up for a challenge. It’s what’s gotten me involved in a lot of the different things that I’ve done in business.

“I don’t talk a lot about [NFL front office aspirations], just because it [talking] is too easy to do,” he added. “But I will always wonder what that might have looked like had I decided to go down that route.”

Recent weeks have given Aikman a taste of franchise-building, but if he doesn’t take on a full-time role as the Dolphins embark on a course he helped set, will he continue to wonder? As he spoke Friday to “The Musers” from Miami, he didn’t seem to dismiss any possibility.

“I’m really excited about the process,” he said, adding, “It’s been great; so we’ll see where this might go.”

Unlike Ryan’s return to an Atlanta organization for which he played from 2008 to 2022, we know that possibility doesn’t exist for Aikman with the Cowboys, for whom Jerry Jones holds the titles of owner, president and general manager.

Here, Director of Football would, at best, be a ceremonial title.

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