It didn’t take long for Micah Parsons and his contract to become a main topic of conversation at the Cowboys’ state of the franchise press conference Monday. The traditional Q&A session, which put owner Jerry Jones, COO Stephen Jones, and head coach Brian Schottenheimer behind the mic ahead of Tuesday’s opening practice, was barely underway when the assemblage of reporters asked about the edge rusher’s status.
Parsons, who has made the Pro Bowl in all four of his seasons thus far, is widely expected to become the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL at some point. Many thought that point would have already come by now, as the 26-year-old has made no bones about wanting to get a deal done earlier rather than later.
But such is not the way the Cowboys like to do business.
“I am not the least concerned about having any dangling participles out here on a contract,” Jerry said, using a somewhat out-of-place grammar reference to make his point.
While Cowboys fans would have liked the Ts to have been crossed and the Is to have been dotted long ago for the best defender in the game, the Cowboys owner maintains that he’s not the least bit frustrated that Parsons isn’t locked up to a long-term pact.
“Not at all,” he explained, flashing back to times it has all worked out in the past between the club and holdout stars. “Two years ago we were here, and I think Zack Martin wasn’t here, and you had a situation although he had a contract. You work through that.”
Jones even found a way to subtly promote the upcoming Netflix docuseries chronicling his ownership of the franchise and how a not-dissimilar contract impasse eventually resulted in a Lombardi Trophy in the 1993 season.
“I was looking at this documentary and spent some time going back on the Emmitt Smith negotiation and what was going on there,” Jones offered. “There’s nothing new about what we’re talking about here today relative to contracts. You say, ‘If you don’t get him in, are you going to lose the first two games then go on to win the Super Bowl?’ Well, we’ll take that.”
But getting smug about a championship story from three decades ago doesn’t help the 2025 team, who is decidedly not coming off a title season or looking to simply keep their hot streak going.
While the ’93 squad could look to Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, and others in Smith’s absence, this current iteration of the Dallas defense would be barely a shell of itself if Parsons found himself playing in the final year of his deal with no promises beyond 2025.
Parsons has hinted he may make a business decision and “hold in” while the team is in Oxnard, not participating in any drills or practices for fear of a fluke ankle turn or ACL tear that would cost him a literal fortune.
Bizarrely, Jones himself brought up the ever-present specter of injury, hinting at it as a factor in why the organization is just as happy to wait to make things official.
“Just because we sign him,” Jones offered, “doesn’t mean we’re going to have him. He was hurt six games last year. [Ed note: It was actually four.] Seriously. I remember signing a player for the highest-paid at the position in the league and he got knocked out two-thirds of the [way through the] year: Dak Prescott. There’s a lot of things you can think about- just as the player does- when you’re thinking committing and guaranteeing money.”
To try to help illustrate the uncertainty of life in the NFL, Jones at one point compared football players to cars, thinking back to a time when he remembers a new Buick costing just $5,000.
“I’ve seen ’em go dead at at $5,000, and I’ve seen ’em go dead at $50,000,” he said. “It’s just the times you’re in and the money you’re in. I’m not trying to be cute.”
But if not cute, the mention of Prescott’s season-ending hamstring injury as some sort of complaint about the team’s lack of return on their $240 million investment in the quarterback certainly came across as grossly cavalier and incredibly callous.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with Parsons’s current situation.
If anything, the former first-round draft pick is following in Prescott’s footsteps by showing up at camp and being present with his teammates, even as his own payday uncertainty is an ongoing top news story.
It’s all part, the team seems intent on emphasizing, of Parsons graduating into his new expected role as a true leader in the locker room.
“When you’re up there in that top ten percent, so to speak, of the league and that top quartile of your team,” Jones stressed, “leadership is really big. And leaders exhibit themselves when you’re negotiating as well. So I’m appreciative of Micah being here.”
Schottenheimer is too, though he was adamant that whether or not his superstar edge rusher practices, the tenor of the team’s work in Oxnard will not change.
“However this thing plays out, it’s going to play out,” the coach said. “The fact that Micah’s here: he’s talked all offseason about wanting to take more of a leadership role, he’s talked about wanting to be great. We know he’s a great player. We’re excited he’s here. There’s a lot of ways to get this thing done, but like we’ve said, we’re committed to having him take that next step, not just as a player but as leader.”
Parsons is, after all, technically under contract for 2025… as is every Cowboys player in attendance. That was the very first point Jones made sure to call out in the press conference.
But the blatant reminder that Parsons is already locked up for the upcoming season- at the relative bargain price of $21.32 million- was quickly followed by a push for him to step up in other ways, to apparently prove he’s worth north of $40 million a year.
“I’m big into- and I’m not alone, either,” Jones explained, “showing anything you can do for leadership if you’re going to be one of these guys that are in the top drawer of all the money.”
Make no mistake: Parsons deserves to be in that top drawer. And just as history has shown- with Emmitt Smith, with Zack Martin, with CeeDee Lamb, and with Dak Prescott- he’ll almost certainly get there.
The Joneses have to do it their way, though, and that means dragging it out while the boss spins tales of the glory days and drops corn-pone zingers and suggests all manner of impossibly shrewd backroom negotiations.
But in the end, Parsons will get his money. Jones himself basically admitted as much.
“Of all of the players that I’ve ever negotiated with,” he said, “Micah Parsons is as savvy and knowledgeable and understanding of his financial business relative to football as any player I’ve ever been around.”
But the extended song and dance to get there is- maddeningly for fans- just part of the process for Jones.
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This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: Jerry Jones ‘Not the least concerned’ on contract talks, takes shot at Parsons, Prescott
Reporting by Todd Brock, Cowboys Wire / Cowboys Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
