In the current NFL landscape, pass rushers are at a premium. The Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams had Aaron Donald and Von Miller for starters. Double-digit sack players are a coveted asset for any team that’s looking to make the jump into playoff contention.
After the Dallas Cowboys botched the Randy Gregory re-signing, a hole opened at the defensive end spot. Micah Parsons, who can play about anywhere on defense, popped out as the immediate bandage for Dallas in the moment. Head coach Mike McCarthy isn’t eliminating Parsons from the rotation, but if health at the DE spot holds up in 2022, he hopes to use Parsons as a swiss-army knife without dedicating him to the DL like the club had to several times in 2021.
As a rookie, Parsons finished with 13 sacks and 30 QB hits, earning Defensive Rookie of the Year and first-team All-Pro honors. The caveat is limiting Parsons to only rushing the passer when his talents far exceed such a small box. Few would argue Parsons can’t be a 20-sack player but Mike McCarthy doesn’t want to chain down the lion.
“”The people that say, ‘Hey, why don’t you play him at defensive end?’ very fair. That’s a very fair question,” said McCarthy. “But we’ve made it clear: We want him moving around.”
It’s a good problem to have when deciding where to play such a talent like Parsons but it also reflects an issue the Cowboys have. The linebacker position needs some reinforcement, they’ve failed to address it. They needed to keep Gregory in town, they failed.
Dallas is forced to make Parsons clean up the mess now instead of adding to the firepower. With that said, the Cowboys can still move the Penn State product around and McCarthy referenced his sacks from the linebacker spot.
“It would be very easy to just line him up at end and play him there every down, but the fact of the matter is he had, what, 13 sacks. Seven came from the linebacker position, six from the defensive end position,” McCarthy said.
According to Pro Football Focus, of Parsons’ 961 snaps played on defense in 2021, 390 of them came as a defensive lineman. 540 of them came as a box defender with the rest as a coverage player. It sounds like McCarthy and company would like an even wider gulf considering 204 of Parsons’ snaps as a DL occurred in just four weeks when Dallas was thin as the DE position.
As the NFL game has changed, players like Parsons can revamp a defense like we saw in 2021. It’s not to say everyone else didn’t have an impact but Parsons’ impact is endless.
Ideally, Dallas adds some reinforcements in the front seven and Dan Quinn gets to have his playground with Parsons if all goes to plan.