We're only just beginning Week 2 of the 2025 NFL season, yet the Cowboys continue to field scores of questions regarding their decision to trade Micah Parsons.
It doesn't help that Parsons' new team, the Green Bay Packers, are driving day-after discussion with their dominant defensive performances through two weeks. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones remains steadfast, however, that he made the right decision in sending Parsons to Wisconsin.
"There are 30 other teams, other than the Cowboys, playing without Micah," Jones said Friday on 105.3 The Fan. "There's ways to play defense and scheme that don't necessarily involve, on any player, whether it be Deion Sanders, looking way back or who it is… A lot of people won a lot of games and didn't have Deion Sanders on the field for them. How'd that happen? That's called you've got to have about minimum 40-something players to play this game."
Jones has experience with moving one player for a collection of fresh faces. He famously traded running back Herschel Walker to Minnesota in a deal that awarded Dallas an assortment of draft picks the Cowboys eventually used to rebuild their roster into the dynastic club that won three Super Bowls in the 1990s.
Thirty years later, Dallas is still coasting on the energy produced by those triumphs. The Parsons deal was different, though, because Jones willingly moved an elite defender instead of paying him at market rate and has since claimed it was a deal done with the belief it improved their chances of winning now.
"I see an allocation. I see more of an allocation here," Jones explained. "As opposed to Herschel Walker, which was to basically get draft picks and was basically a recognition that we would compete on another day, this was not that. This was a very conscious trade to get three, four, five, six players for one.
"Which will be better off? The one player? Outstanding. He's an outstanding player. But we should be able to get, as a matter of fact, we've got one on the field [Kenny Clark]. And of course, people say, 'But he's no Micah.' Well, I'm not going to debate that at all because Micah is very, very special. But I'll tell you this right now, by the time this happens, and as we look forward to Dak's time, when we made his contract and we look forward, this was the best way to maximize our chance to get a Super Bowl for Dak (Prescott)."
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The Cowboys have played just one game in 2025 and have already demonstrated they have a truly competitive offense built around Prescott that features diverse play-calling and enough playmakers to contend for the NFC East title. The same cannot be said for their defense, underscoring the significance of the Parsons trade.
Parsons, meanwhile, is a star in a balanced, aggressive and creative Green Bay defense that has through two weeks shut down two explosive NFC offenses that made deep playoff runs a year ago.
The contrast is glaring. It's also a necessary evil in the salary cap era, according to Jones.
"With a player of that stature and of that color, in terms of his romance, what he might be able to bring, everybody's looking for the guy that can absolutely, singly make the defense. Everybody wants that guy," Jones said. "We had him for four years. You see what we did for four years. My point is one guy doesn't do it.
"The closest thing there is for one guy to make that much difference is a quarterback. When you start going from there, then man, you've got to really look at allocating $100 million, $200 million and allocating that over many players and positions. That's exactly what I did."
Jones is widely known as a gambler of a businessman -- so much that a new Netflix documentary on those 1990s Cowboys includes a mention of Jones as "the gambler" -- and he's banking on this latest risk paying off for his team. We're still in the first month of the test that will be the 2025 season. There's plenty of football left to be played in Dallas, starting Sunday against the visiting Giants.
But if the Packers maintain this level of play, it's guaranteed Jones will continue to hear about the trade (from Green Bay fans and others) and be asked about it -- especially if Dallas encounters any semblance of struggles.
"The way they're playing, the way Green Bay is playing, I'm all for 'em enjoying and chanting anything that they want to play. I understand that," Jones said. "If you make a move on a top player, this shouldn't surprise anybody that we would have that kind of reaction from the other team's fanbase -- or for that matter our fanbase, in general.
"I knew this was coming. Almost the day I walked into training camp, I knew that if I got to make this trade that this would be there and coming."