ORR: Micah Parsons Trade Is Proof Jerry Jones Should No Longer Lead Cowboys | VERDERAME: Micah Parsons Trade Grades
Welp, I was wrong. Jerry Jones did trade Micah Parsons after all.
A few days after saying Jones wouldn’t trade his star player, the Cowboys shocked the football world by sending Parsons to the Packers in exchange for two first-round picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark. Green Bay also agreed to a four-year, $188 contract extension to make Parsons the highest-paid nonquarterback in the league.
The Packers immediately became Super Bowl contenders after landing Parsons. As for the Cowboys, their fans should be very concerned that Jones decided to part with one of his most-popular players. For all his faults, at least Jones made sure to keep his star players over the years. That can no longer be said about the brash owner.
In the next few days, reports will likely emerge as to why Jones made this head-scratching decision. Maybe Parsons didn’t want to give Jones a proper toast, which was the mistake former Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson made more than 30 years ago at the league meetings (yes, I’ve been watching Jones’s Netflix documentary). He might be working on another documentary to share the behind-the-scenes details about this stunning trade.
For now, here are the winners and losers in this shocking deal.
Winners
Micah Parsons
Not many believed that Parsons wanted out of Dallas when he unleashed a lengthy essay from his iPhone notes app to announce that he had requested a trade from the Cowboys. The move came off as a leverage tactic to ignite contract negotiations.
We probably should have paid more attention to how many of his teammates came to his defense, as if they were preparing to lose their best defensive player in the midst of his prime.
All the signs were there, from Jones not knowing the name of Parsons’s agent, David Mulugheta, to the star edge rusher looking disinterested in the team’s preseason finale. This, obviously, got very ugly behind the scenes. Parsons wasn’t kidding when he gestured to a Falcons fan that Atlanta should call his representatives. As it turned out, it was the Packers who called and made sure to give Parsons what he wanted all along.
Parsons, 26, will now get to play with a team that was better than the Cowboys before he got there, checking the box for playing with a contender. As for the contract, Parsons came out a huge winner there, too. He’s now the new highest-paid nonquarterback in the league, and it’s not even close. Parsons’s $188 million in total value is more than Nick Bosa’s $170 million, and his annual average salary of $47 million is $6 million more than what T.J. Watt received earlier this summer.
Additionally, Parsons’s new deal includes a guaranteed $136 million. That’s more than the $123.5 million the Browns guaranteed for Myles Garrett’s extension. To compare, Parsons’s new quarterback, Jordan Love, received a contract with $160.3 million guaranteed. For more comparisons, Parsons’s old teammate, CeeDee Lamb, got $100 million guaranteed in his extension from Dallas.
Outside of not being able to play in Dallas, Parsons got what he wanted, and he can finally move on from this messy dispute with the Cowboys.
Packers
I’ll be honest here. I didn’t expect the Packers to make the playoffs before this trade.
I was concerned about Love’s 2024 regression, the lack of a true No. 1 wide receiver and a defensive front filled with concerns. My views have now completely changed with Parsons, especially because Green Bay didn’t give up any of its top edge rushers.
My initial guess was that Dallas gained edge rusher Rashan Gary in the trade. Instead, the Cowboys acquired Clark, which makes some sense, because the team has struggled to stop the run for years and already had a few promising edge rushers.
However, Clark, 29, is coming off a down season and the Packers probably had no issue with adding him to the trade package. Now, the Packers get to pair Parsons with Gary, who’s better suited to be a No. 2 edge rusher. The team also doesn’t have to rely as much on Lukas Van Ness, the 2023 first-round pick, who has struggled with consistency.
Green Bay is thin in the interior of the defense, but can make that up with the help of stud second-year linebacker Edgerrin Cooper. Defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley now has the pieces to think with an abundance of combinations, courtesy of stout pass rush.
NFC East
Jayden Daniels, Jalen Hurts and Russell Wilson/Jaxson Dart must be thrilled that they no longer have to deal with Parsons in the NFC East.
Coaches Dan Quinn, Nick Sirianni and Brian Daboll can sleep better during Dallas game week, knowing that they have to game plan for Dante Fowler Jr., Sam Williams, Marshawn Kneeland rather than Parsons.
Before the messy contract dispute, I genuinely believed that the Cowboys could compete with the Commanders and Eagles due to their stout offensive and defensive lines. Jones hindered those advantages when he shipped Parsons to Green Bay.
The Commanders are talented, but they don’t have a star pass rusher, like the Cowboys now. And maybe the Giants’ difficult schedule becomes easier with Parsons in the NFC North.
Jones should expect a fruit basket from Giants owner John Mara, who should now get less attention for being the guy who traded Saquon Barkley.
David Mulugheta
The Jones family probably knows the name of Parsons’s agent by now. Heck, they probably know how to spell David Mulugheta without Googling it.
The super agent ran circles around the Cowboys’ front office and landed a massive contract extension for his client. Jones decided to be petty by taking shots at Mulugheta in the media, which he might never do again whenever he has to deal with one of Mulugheta’s many clients.
Losers
Jerry Jones
Obviously, Jones is the biggest loser in this shocking trade. I’m still surprised that it got to this point because I just spent Thursday morning watching how Jones went above and beyond to overpay for Deion Sanders in 1995.
Couldn’t Jones manufacture another deal with Nike to pay Parsons what he wanted? Or maybe Jones didn’t want to pay because, for once, one of his players decided to be as petty as the 82-year-old and got his feelings hurt in the process, similar to his feud with Johnson in the 1990s.
For decades, Jones has prioritized dollars and attention over winning another Lombardi Trophy. He constantly failed at building deep teams good enough to win the Super Bowl. Still, he has often had a superstar or two to stay relevant in the headlines and create a franchise worth nearly $13 billion. This is why it’s so strange that Jones decided to go this route with Parsons.
Part of me wants to give Jones credit for trying something different, gaining draft picks to build a complete team rather than a top-heavy team with stars. But going off Jones’s track record, this was more about spite than building a team for the long haul.
The Raiders received praise in the aftermath of the Khalil Mack trade for gaining multiple first-round picks from the Bears in 2018. But many forgot that it was the Raiders that would be making the picks. The same thinking applies here for a franchise that has not played in an NFC title game in 30 years.
The decision-makers aren’t changing in Dallas. The Jones family doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt that this could turn into a Herschel Walker 2.0 trade—unless they bring back Johnson.
Brian Schottenheimer
The Cowboys new coach got a raw deal here. His team got weaker and will be expected to produce fast results. The odds of him being around to see the two first-round picks develop are pretty slim.
Unless Schottenheimer helps produce a prolific offense, this could be a long Year 1 as the head coach. The Cowboys no longer have the benefit of leaning on a ferocious pass rush to mask the issues in the back end of the defense.
Dak Prescott, Lamb and George Pickens will need to be elite on a weekly basis to make up for the poor defense. We all saw how that worked out for the Bengals last year, and we can all agree that Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins are a better trio than the one in Dallas.
Good luck, Schottenheimer.
NFC North
The Lions, Vikings and Bears now have to deal with Parsons in the NFC North.
Bears quarterback Caleb Williams was sacked 68 times in his rookie season. Hello, Parsons.
The Vikings’ magical 14-win season came crashing down in the final two games because they couldn’t stop the pass rush. Hola, Parsons.
And the Lions likely weren’t worrying too much about a Packers team they swept last year, the same squad that got swept by Philadelphia and Minnesota. Now, the Packers are a real threat in the NFC North and the conference. Thanks to the Cowboys.
Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb
I wonder what Prescott and Lamb must be thinking, knowing that their job on Sundays got a whole lot harder with a suspect defense. Just last year, they committed to the franchise with massive contract extensions.
I’m sure they’re not shedding tears about the money they gained, but I bet somewhere in the back of their minds, they’re thinking about whether they made a mistake by staying in Dallas. Maybe Prescott and Lamb asked Jones last year before signing whether they should be worried about Parsons getting paid.
Besides the money, part of the reason why players re-sign with a team is that, in most cases, they receive reassurances that the team is committed to winning. Trading Parsons does nothing for the Cowboys in 2025. It could be a lost year, and Prescott and Lamb have no time to waste waiting on the extra draft picks to pan out.
Packers’ future drafts
The Packers are all in for this year and probably next year, too. That might be their window for maximizing this bold trade to get to a Super Bowl. You don’t make this kind of move thinking about the future because you know trading multiple first-round picks is never a good idea for building teams.
The Rams quickly turned the Matthew Stafford trade into a Lombardi Trophy and had no issues rebuilding with Stafford after winning it all in their first year. The Bears didn’t get it done with Mack, now in his fourth season with the Chargers, and Chicago is still searching for a franchise quarterback.
Players get old quickly and regress without notice. It’s on the Packers to make this deal count before preparing for an uphill battle to retool the roster without first-round picks.
Sacred money doesn’t make money, though. The Packers won it all with the splash signing of Reggie White, winning Super Bowl XXXI. Now someone needs to remind Jones about what Sanders did for him when he showed him the money.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Micah Parsons Trade: NFC East Among the Big Winners, Plenty of Losers in Blockbuster.