Mike Florio ,
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Micah Parsons is gone from the Cowboys, but the hard feelings linger.
Months of acrimony resulted in an August 28 trade to the Packers. Since then, owner and G.M. Jerry Jones has largely played defense by explaining in various ways the decision to trade away one of the best defensive players in football. At a time when his team’s defense is now among the worst in the sport.
On Monday, eight days after Parsons publicly complained about the team’s treatment of cornerback Trevon Diggs, Jones tried a new argument. Basically, Jones suggested that Parsons isn’t worthy of the money he wanted.
The question from Stephen A. Smith of SiriusXM to Jones focused broadly on whether Jones looks in players now for traits displayed by former greats like Michael Irvin and DeMarcus Ware, and whether Jones sees it in his current players. In his response, Jones went straight to the moment when Parsons laid on a training table during a preseason game in which he wasn’t playing due to his contract dispute.
“Not one time, not even in the hottest of days and two-a-days in August in Texas, between eleven in the morning or when they quit practicing or four in the afternoon, did I never see any one of these two go over and lay on a damn training table in front of a million people,” Jones said. “Never. It’s not in their makeup. . . . It’s just not in their makeup. . . .
“And you’d like to think if you’re going to be [paying] the highest that’s ever been paid for something in football, you could get that. And when you don’t have it and you pay the highest that’s ever been in football, you really got a problem.”
It’s a weak argument, frankly. Parsons — who played without hesitation in 2024 for well below market value even though he was eligible for a new deal — was using the tools available to him to get the contract his performance has earned. Jones was trying to squeeze Parsons to honor the terms of a supposed handshake deal that Jones tried to do behind the back of Parsons’s agent.
If Irvin or Ware or any other highly-skilled Cowboys player of yesteryear were in the same position Parsons was in, what would they have done? Gladly accepted an offer that didn’t reflect their value, or taken a stand?
When Michael Irvin played, players had little or no leverage. Now, they do. Now, players are willing to fight for what they deserve.
The entire situation happened because Jones wanted to lowball Parsons, and because Jones got upset when Parsons didn’t respond to mistreatment with gratitude. Taking a clumsy shot at Parsons’s character is just the latest ploy in Jones’s misguided P.R. effort aimed at making the fans see it his way before lining up behind the billionaires.
As they all too often do.
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