When do you think a Micah Parsons deal is going to happen?
Dallas Cowboys training camp is coming soon. And we all know what that means. The team is facing a big contract to complete with one of their star players. This year’s star is pass rusher Micah Parsons.
The expectation, based on history, is that things will drag out until the last moment, then Jerry Jones will overpay Parsons. Things are complicated by the situation the Pittsburgh Steelers have with T.J. Watt. They are locked in a similar negotiation. Whichever of the two EDGE rushers signs first should be the highest paid non-quarterback in the league – until the other gets his bag. You can be sure both Parsons’ and Watt’s camps are well aware of this, and in no hurry to get things done first.
But maybe it’s time for the Cowboys to take a different approach. David Howman and Tom Ryle discuss.
Tom: Let’s get radical. How about the team tells Parsons they are not going to do an extension at all?
I am sure a lot of people are reacting strongly to that. But consider some facts. Parsons is a top ten pass rusher, but many consider him to be barely in the top five, or even just outside. He has a clear tendency to pile up sacks against lesser opponents while largely disappearing in big games against better teams. Good offensive lines seem to have a way to neutralize him.
It’s time to have a real talk with him about needing to prove he can help the team win those big games. If not, it may be time to contemplate life without him. See if he would be open to a trade, or seeing how things stand next year.
Howman: Let me put this as politely as possible: no thank you.
Micah Parsons is, at best, the greatest pass rusher in the NFL and, at worst, one of the five best pass rushers in the NFL. Count me among the former, as his versatility to move all around the defense makes him more valuable than the Myles Garrett’s of the world.
Simply put, that’s not the kind of player you willingly part with. Jon Gruden was rightfully ridiculed for trading Khalil Mack when he was at the height of his powers, and look how that turned out for the Raiders. The Cowboys would have to be out of their minds, even more so than they usually are, to trade Parsons away.
Tom: A big part of my reasoning is that the Cowboys are caught between the rock of the salary cap and the hard place of having to try and pay both Parsons and Dak Prescott, with another decision looming on CeeDee Lamb. And I’ve come around to the idea that defense is just not the place to sink too much of that cap space. Frankly, the Steelers are in the same place with Watt. The huge amount of their cap they devote to defense has not exactly worked out for them.
I realize that going a different direction with Parsons would not be consistent with how they have conducted business for years now. Still, Brian Schottenheimer seems to have a strong voice in things. And we know he is offense minded. If he has more control than Mike McCarthy did, which there are at least hints of, then this might not be an impossible development. I don’t think this is a year to try and go all in, or at least the Dallas version. It’s more a time to rebuild and try to keep Prescott healthy. Put the resources on the offensive side of the line, and go with youth and some careful additions through free agency for the D.
Howman: I can see the argument for why you’d trade Parsons. There’s only so much pie, as Stephen Jones loves to say, and if you’ve reached the conclusion that there’s not enough pie for Parsons then you might as well see what you can get for him.
That’s the rub for me though. I don’t trust this front office to get a reasonable compensation package for Parsons. There’s a lot of things this front office does well, but trades aren’t one of them. Getting a fifth for Amari Cooper is still unforgivable, and they actively undermined their own trading leverage when they were shopping La’el Collins before cutting him.
A Parsons trade ought to be the modern equivalent of Herschel Walker, or at least on the level of the Khalil Mack trade. This front office simply doesn’t have the ability to pull off something like that, which means any trade of Parsons would be a poor return on investment.
Tom: I admit the tendency of this team to deal away players for peanuts does give me pause. Still, my argument is more about just what they are able to put together. If they back up the Brinks truck for Parsons and then open the checkbook again for Lamb, what else are they going to have around them? We’d all love a 1990s style team just loaded with stars, but that is not how it works in the NFL anymore.
I know it is all about this year in the NFL, but with those three deals, this is a very top heavy team with little room to build the depth you need for the long season. And as we have seen, it just takes one bad hit to nullify all that spending. I’m sure I am not going to get a lot of agreement here, but I still don’t think the Cowboys can afford Parsons on a record setting deal, no matter how great his talent on the field.