As the NFL season is set to kick off on Thursday night, the Dallas Cowboys are continuing to squeeze the vice-like grip they’ve held on sports media attention all throughout training camp. For the last two months, the press couldn’t get enough of the drama unfolding over the very public and seemingly nasty “negotiations” between Owner/General Manager Jerry Jones and star pass rusher Micah Parsons over the latter’s desire for a potentially market-resetting contract extension.
Last week, the melodrama concluded with Jones surprisingly calling Parsons’ bluff and granting the trade request that the perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate feigned as leverage during the back-and-forth. As tempers flared, Jones acquiesced and sent Dallas’ best player to the Green Bay Packers in exchange for a pair of first-round draft picks and aging Pro Bowl defensive tackle Kenny Clark, a seemingly meager return.
For local sports fans, this feeling is all too familiar. As anyone with an internet connection will certainly recall, in February, the Dallas Mavericks turned the entire NBA upside down by engineering the most blunderous trade in league (if not pro sports) history by sending phenom Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers, receiving even less in return than the Cowboys collected for Parsons.
For the second time in just six months, a local sports team has traded their best player, one just entering the prime of their career, to a conference foe and failed to receive proportionate spoils in exchange, and North Texas is once again a pro sports laughingstock. The talking haircuts on the cable shows are eviscerating Jones’ stupidity, and fans are going through it. It makes one wonder what those inside the organization feel about this latest Cowboys fiasco. Could they offer some novel insight that may soften the blow? Or simply throw more gasoline on the fire? We turn to our two secret sources within the Cowboys for their thoughts.
Troy Fakeman
I’m tired. It’s been a grueling and intolerable last few months. As I sit in my basement office at The Star™, surrounded by empty bottles of Jim Beam and Pepto Bismol, I’m trying to find hope for the 2025 season, and one of the most legitimate reasons to have had a little just walked out the door to Green Bay. What at first seemed like classic Jerry contractual rope-a-dope got ugly. Jerry took it personal, and now another young superstar has walked out of Dallas. What a mess.
It’s always a mess, of course. In my 35 years working for the Joneses, I’ve gotten used to the general, ever-present cloud of chaos that hovers over this organization like the stench of alcohol seeping from your pores the morning after draft night. Just a bit of that chaos has recently been highlighted in bold detail in America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys, the new Netflix series/pharaonic temple erected in the form of big-budget digital streaming content to honor Jerry Jones’ insatiable ego. Despite my own interviews being cut from the docuseries in favor of more camera-friendly visages, it’s a fine piece of work. It’s cleanly filmed and expertly edited and unintentionally manages to encapsulate exactly what’s been wrong with this franchise for the past three decades: a counterproductive obsession with successes from 30 years ago to bolster a brand at the expense of a properly run professional sports organization.
It doesn’t take a Columbo type to deduce that all those member berries and the fawning glorification in those shows likely had the same effect on the boss’ state of mind as The One Ring did on Gollum’s when the old codger pulled the trigger on Parsons. I’d heard more about the Herschel Walker trade in recent weeks than I had in the last 20 years combined. It absolutely had to influence this decision. If the Walker deal set up the Cowboys for our early ’90s glory, maybe the old man could catch lightning in a bottle again and set the team up for a return to that glory, all masterminded by him, sealing Jerry’s legacy as a “football guy” forever and ever, amen.
It’s not the most insane idea he’s ever had. Remember when we gave two first-round picks to the Seahawks for Joey Galloway? I can’t say I exactly agree with the boss when he tells those toadies in the media that this deal makes us better now. They don’t grow Lawrence Taylor starter kits on trees, and No. 11 was as close to one as you’re ever likely to stumble backward into. But we’ve managed to assemble a fairly deep and intimidating pass rush even without the podcaster at the end. We have Dante Fowler (10.5 sacks last year) back to go along with the stable of young edges we’ve been assembling through the draft in recent years: Sam Williams, Marshawn Kneeland, and rookie Donovan Ezeiruaku. We just might be able to get by with that.
The hit we’ve taken at pass rush might be neutralized by the shoring up of the middle of the line by the addition of Clark from Green Bay. He’s passed the peak of his prime, no doubt, but he should have plenty of gas left in the tank and will hopefully — along with our group of young maniac linebackers — help bolster the leaky run defense we’ve suffered from the last several years. Couple what we expect to be an improved defense with an offense led by a healthy Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and the first legit No. 2 receiver we’ve had since Jerry bounced Amari Cooper (another reminder that the lesson is, don’t get crossways with the boss), and we just might sniff a Wild Card slot.
At least that’s the hope. And to keep it, you might have to ignore the giant question marks at running back, left tackle, and any decent corner who can play alongside newly extended ball hawk Daron Bland, to whom Jerry tossed some of that 45 mil he saved by shipping Parsons away.
If you squint really hard, you can maybe just almost see it working. Jim Beam helps. Which reminds me, I’m out, and the liquor store is about to close.
Courtesy X.com
Bo Jacksboro
Should I stash away my wedding china in a safety deposit box? Maybe I’ll bury my collection of vintage baseball cards in the desert. My first-gen GI JOEs are already tucked neatly into the folds of my memory foam mattress.
One thing has become clear in my broken life: I can’t have nice things.
After the trades of Luka Dončić and now Micah Parsons, it’s clear local sports fans can’t either.
Even if you don’t believe the erstwhile Cowboys’ pass rusher was a generational talent, and/or if you think the $47 million annual salary Micah Parsons now earns is too extravagant, any armchair GM could tell you this trade was still terrible.
Somewhere (maybe Twin Peaks with Mike Tomlin and Aaron Rodgers?), Nico Harrison is popping Champagne. We thought for a minute the Mavs’ sneaker jockey might have inched out Jerry as the worst GM in sports, but then Jones said, “Hold my orphan blood-filled chalice.”
Not even Madden ’25 would accept this trade.
Borrowing from the Nico playbook, Jones didn’t really shop Parsons around to other teams. Granted, there were only a handful of clubs that could have managed that level of salary cap Tetris — and even fewer in win-now mode — but had Jones read the tea leaves before the most recent draft, he would have easily garnered more picks. By late August, teams have already addressed their most pressing offseason personnel needs and are likely maxed out in terms of how much money they can spend. The timing of the trade alone made Micah less valuable.
Now, you’re thinking, “Bo, my pal, my homie, my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my goodtime boy, doesn’t the success of this trade hinge on what the team gets back in the draft? And aren’t the Cowboys a terrific drafting team?”
Barring injury, those picks will likely be in the mid-to-late 20s. Let’s take a look at what the Cowboys have done in that part of the draft during the Will McClay era:
- In 2015, we drafted Byron Jones with Pick 27. That worked out OK, although it took the UConn corner a few years to find his footing after being yo-yoed from safety to corner. He eventually moved on to South Beach and became the highest-paid corner in the league, though the ’Fins released him prior to this season. Still, the pick is solidly in the win column.
- In 2017, against my advice, McClay and Co. passed on would-be superstar TJ Watt to take pass rusher Taco Charleton with the 28th pick. Total. Disaster. This pick might have set this franchise back years.
- With its next selection in the 20s, our front office struck gold in 2022 with lineman Tyler Smith at Pick 24. That is a no-doubt, pump-the-fist, crank-the-stereo win. He’s dominant.
- The jury is still out on Tyler Guyton, whom the team nabbed with Pick 29 in the 2024 draft. The early returns aren’t great, but the freaky-athletic Oklahoma offensive tackle is young and still has time to develop.
The front office’s track record suggested the brass will hit on one of those two picks. Does that list inspire you? Does the McClay track record make you feel even a little better about trading your best player not named CeeDee?
America’s team also netted defensive tackle Kenny Clark in the Micah trade, which will no doubt help the Cowboys’ porous run defense. That said, offensive coordinators are not game-planning for an aging interior run-stuffer. Clark is a nice player, but he’s the kind of piece you trade for when your club is one or two players away from contention — certainly not the centerpiece of a trade for the league’s best pass rusher.
For you Micah detractors out there, Parsons led the league in pass rush win rate at 30%, placing him more than four percentage points ahead of the next-closest player. The only other pass rushers with comparable underlying metrics are Myles Garrett, who is entering his age-30 season, and Aidan Hutchinson, who is returning from a significant injury.
Packers fans and Parsons haters need look no further than the trade of Khalil Mack to the Bears a few years ago for why this was a great move for the Cheeseheads and a Luka-level blunder for the ’Boys. Oakland netted two first-round picks, a third, and a sixth. The Bears’ defense went from ninth best to best in terms of points allowed, and the team’s record improved from 5-11 to 12-4. That’s with Mitch Fucking Trubisky under center.
The Raiders used these picks to select defensive end Clelin Ferrell (No. 4 overall), offensive tackle Kolton Miller (No. 15 overall), and cornerback Trayvon Mullen (No. 40 overall). No one is making room in Canton for any of those dudes.
For you stat nerds, the Parsons-led Packers just jumped up to sixth in DVOA — defense-adjusted value over average, a Football Outsiders metric that compares a player’s or unit’s efficiency to other teams — from 14th. The Cowboys plummeted from 13th to 17th after the swap.
As for the cap hit, yeah. You can’t compare the way the current Cowboys front office manages the salary cap to literally any other sports franchise. It defies logic and makes this sort of analysis agonizing.
Sure, the Cowboys dodged a $47 million annual hit. So, obviously, the team can go out next year and spend lavishly in free agency, right? The Cowboys are currently projected to be $14 million in the red next offseason. I have zero doubt the brass will concoct some snappy contract restructures and release some dead weight that will make that number look more palatable by the start of next season. Even with that, this isn’t a front office reputed for spending on outside players. History suggests the Jones Mafia will continue to dredge the bottom of Spare Lake and fish out a few retreads like they always do. (By the way, the team is currently $33-plus million in the black for this season’s cap. That’s about enough for Stephen Jones’ first yacht.)
The part that hurts me the most is that Parsons wanted to be here. So few players in our super-connected media landscape can thrive in Jerry’s circus. Parsons was one of them.
The team didn’t get better by trading away its best player. The defense will be worse this season and likely for the life of Micah’s contract. We live in a world where Donald Trump is president and Jerry Jones is a general manager. Luka is a Laker, and now Micah is a Packer.
Nothing is fair, and no one with any power cares.
The only real choice I have now is whether I’m going to use lighter fluid or gasoline to burn a ton of local sports jerseys. Add those to pile of nice things I once had.
