Chris Vaughn and his son Deuce shared one of the best moments of the 2023 NFL Draft. The Cowboys took Deuce in the sixth round of the draft with the 212th overall pick. Chris is the assistant director of college scouting for the team and got the honor of calling his son with the great news.
The best surprise of it all is that the team didn’t let Chris know until it was time to actually make the pick. They kept him in the dark, and that made the moment even more special for everyone involved.
Deuce Got The Call
The moment between the father and son was shared all over social media on Saturday, April 29. Chris made the call and asked him a simple question.
“Look here, man, do you want to come to work with me next week?” Vaughn, his voice cracking, asked his son on video from the team’s draft room.
Deuce answered, “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”
Chris has reportedly been with the team since 2017 and refused to write a report or talk about his son leading up to the draft because he didn’t want to have any influence on the draft decision.
“I’m not thinking we’re taking Deuce, because when I come in, we’re talking about a couple other players as options,” Vaughn told Sports Illustrated after the draft.
He continued, “I commented on the guys we’re talking about, the positives, the negatives of taking him there. I’m completely team first, but yeah, there’s that inner struggle. Once we finished that conversation, we as a group decided on a player. We went on the clock; I thought we were taking that player.”
Then, to his surprise owner Jerry Jones looked at him with a grin and handed him the draft card with Deuce’s name on it. Chris started crying but then got up to give out hugs and high fives to his colleagues before calling Deuce.
“Over the past 21 years of my life and to see him react the way that he did, I’m not going to lie,” Deuce said to ESPN. “It was a tearjerker.”
“I wanted it to happen organically,” Chris said to ESPN. “I wanted everything to fall into place as if it would. And over the past two weeks, the biggest thing we kind of echoed to each other is that I just needed a chance. It didn’t matter what round. It didn’t matter exactly what pick. I just needed a chance, a foot in the door. For it to be Dallas, oh man, it’s unbelievable.”
Deuce Can Ball
Deuce played his college ball at Kansas State. In his three-year career he ran for 3,604 yards, 34 touchdowns and had 1,280 receiving yards. Last season, he led the FBS in all-purpose yards with 1,936.
He fell late in the draft because of his 4.6 seconds he ran in the 40-yard dash at the NFL combine in March and his small size. Deuce is only 5-foot-5 and weighs 179 pounds. His size and speed scared teams away, but his performance against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl kept him on many draft boards.
Deuce ran for 133 rushing yards and one touchdown against the Crimson Tide. He rushed for at least 130 yards in the last three games of the season last year to close out his college career. He eclipsed the 100-yard rushing mark in 9 of the team’s 14 games last season.
Fox Sports Analyst and longtime Cowboys fan Skip Bayless loved the pick.
Cowboys executive and owner’s son Stephen Jones also loved the pick.
“You watch him run through Alabama’s defense, breaking ankles and doing things that he did, he’ll make a believer out of you in a hurry,” Jones said to ESPN.
Deuce fills a huge hole in the Cowboys’ running back after the release of Ezekiel Elliott.
