Let’s begin by reading the room. Micah Parsons, despite his recent trade demand, is probably not getting traded. Most local writers believe it isn’t happening. National writers generally don’t believe it is happening. History tells us it isn’t happening; the list of trades for difference-making players in NFL training camps is a short one. Personally, I hold a contrarian opinion here and believe there’s a chance it does happen, mostly because I don’t think Dallas’ front office should make anyone feel comfortable with the idea they’ll pass up the chance to save a few bucks just to do the rational thing. We just saw them forgo most of a coaching search to settle on Brian Schottenheimer! Still, I’ll start with an implied position of: despite the trade demand, most people don’t believe Parsons will be traded.
Until a deal actually gets done, though, we need to acknowledge the trade demand on the table and examine what the Cowboys’ considerations if they acquiesce and decide to move Parsons. And as the Joneses and Parsons settle into their bunkers in this ongoing August Cold War, I have one extremely relevant comparison to this situation to share with the class.
The most similar situation to Parsons in the last 25 years came when Khalil Mack was traded from the Raiders to the Bears in the days leading up to the 2018 season. Tell me if the following sounds familiar. Mack was on his fifth-year option with free agency looming. He had a case for the best defensive player in the NFL; Mack had 40 1/2 career sacks, two All-Pro first-team selections, and a Defensive Player of the Year award. (Parsons, by way of comparison, has 52 1/2 sacks and two All-Pro first-team selections.) He wanted to be paid accordingly, and negotiations were stuck. The Raiders grew anchored to numbers. As Reggie McKenzie, the team’s general manager at the time, would later say, “We couldn’t get around giving Khalil what he wanted.” Then, out of nowhere, came the trade demand. Here’s McKenzie again: “It was at the end, in the final hour, that it just hit. It hit hard and heavy. It was not a plan to trade him.” But the Raiders did, and immediately upon landing Mack, the Bears made him the highest-paid defensive player in the league, which Parsons almost assuredly will be no matter which uniform he’s wearing next month.
If all of that sticks in your mind, then the Raiders’ asking price should, too. Mack netted two first-round picks, and I believe that would be the start of the trade conversation for Parsons, even though I don’t know if the Cowboys would get there because I think teams value draft picks more than they did eight or nine years ago.
Other stars have been traded in September. Richard Seymour was a star defensive end who fetched a first-round pick, for example, but he was neither as young nor the caliber of player of Mack and Parsons. Left tackle Laremy Tunsil checks most of the boxes—fifth-year option looming, superstar talent—without the same level of acclaim and at a different position.
The other contract that comes to mind, surprisingly, is the Deshaun Watson deal. But not the one with the Browns that launched NFLPA collusion depositions. Watson’s extension with the Texans was special not because it set major monetary records, but because it included a full no-trade clause. And it was negotiated by the agent who also represents Parsons, David Mulugheta. I’m not bringing this contract up to say Mulugheta was masterminding Watson’s holdout from the beginning or otherwise cast aspersions on him as some sort of Scott Boras acolyte, but rather to note that Mulugheta is one of the most creative agents in the game as far as delivering value for his clients.
In other words, while the he-said, he-said discussions between Parsons and Jerry Jones in the offseason makes for good gossip, it would take a level of head-in-sand-burying that I find impractical even from the Joneses for them to think that would mean anything when the agent is Mulugheta. They’ve known this moment was coming for a couple of years, and it’s almost pathetic to see them wallowing and talking about conversations without an agent—an agent they seem keen to disrespect by not calling—as something that has meaning today.
The reality is Parsons deserves to be the highest-paid defender in the NFL. Seven players in NFL history have recorded 50 sacks through their first four seasons: Parsons, J.J. Watt, Dwight Freeney, DeMarcus Ware, Derrick Thomas, Reggie White, and Al Baker. Those are Hall of Fame players, along with Parsons and Baker, who holds the NFL’s unofficial single-season sack record and spent the majority of his prime playing for the Lions and Cardinals in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I’m not saying Parsons is White or Watt—not yet, anyway. But it would make zero sense for his agent not to consider him in their class.
Back to Mack. The other reason that his situation looms large in my head while considering Parsons’ is the direction their respective teams were (and are) going. The Raiders had a 12-year stretch from 2003 to 2014 in which they won 56 games. Mack and Derek Carr had just soft-launched an era where the team was expected to be competitive. After moving Mack, the Raiders finished 4-12 in 2018, went into a tailspin, and arguably still haven’t recovered.
Your mileage may vary on how hard the Cowboys are trying to win the Super Bowl. But by paying Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb what they are, the Cowboys are not not trying. Trading Parsons immediately extinguishes whatever hope they would have. Forget about the fact you can’t begin to replicate Parsons—you can’t approach anything close just one month before the season. I don’t think the Cowboys’ edge room lacks promise, but the only proven NFL producer outside of Parsons is Dante Fowler. You could add an unsigned Za’Darius Smith and perhaps get a decent pass rush, but nothing close to what Parsons delivers.
And the idea of a trade coming together in which Parsons gets shipped and a top pass rusher comes back borders on farcical. Are the Cowboys supposed to trade Parsons for, say, Danielle Hunter and say that everything is OK because they have acquired a similarly talented player, even though said player is much older? What are the odds of that happening when September trades in the NFL are rare to begin with? Most NFL trades aren’t dealing a known quality for a different known quality, and it would take a lot to come together quickly for something like that to make sense.
The other option—the way most of these trades go—is to deal the star for a treasure trove of draft picks and worry about how to distribute that value later. Inevitably, that leaves the aftermath of the trade in the hands of the future decisionmakers, but it’s hard to argue that if the front office makes the right selections the team won’t be better off with two first-round picks. There’s a reason the most recent examples we have of this sort of trade came in 2018 and ’19. NFL front offices know they are fighting a yearly battle of attrition and that, outside of a star quarterback, depth of talent matters a lot to keep the risk of the roster down.
Again, though, the timeline. The Cowboys don’t have a year to waste playing with a subpar defense. Prescott, at 32, isn’t getting any younger. This team can’t throw a season away and become the Raiders without acknowledging what that means for the roster they’ve built. And because Dallas traded for George Pickens a few months ago, it would be an extremely sharp pivot to suddenly go into asset allocation mode.
Let’s return to the Mack trade one last time. The Raiders show one potential consequence of what can happen when you chase the picks to be married to an older idea of value. His record-setting contract was blown out of the water by other extensions the very next year, just like Parsons’ would be. The draft haul they received in the trade effectively became Josh Jacobs, Damon Arnette, and Bryan Edwards. Jacobs is still a good NFL running back, but only gave the Raiders one superlative season in the five years he was there. The other two players are trying to hang onto the fringes of rosters. The Cowboys could (and should) do better than that because Will McClay is a real personnel manager while the Jon Gruden-Mike Mayock pairing that ran the Raiders’ front office at the time made a series of horrendous picks that went against consensus. But attrition, as I wrote earlier, does have a way of hitting NFL teams.
When you take the birds in the bush over what is in hand, sometimes they all fly away. There’s no real reason for the Cowboys not to treat their most valuable commodity as such. But if they want to continue their plan to FAFO with one of the best agents in the NFL, they’re most likely not going to find any value in it. Or wins.
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Rivers McCown
Rivers McCown
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Rivers McCown covers the Cowboys for StrongSide. He has written about football since 2009 for NBC Sports EDGE, The Athletic,…