The last time Cowboys owner and G.M. Jerry Jones was asked about linebacker Micah Parsons, Jones didn’t have much to say.
This time, he did.
Appearing on Hall of Fame receiver Michael Irvin’s podcast, Jerry engaged in a borderline tour de force as to the Parsons contract situation.
Here was the money quote, via Joseph Hoyt of the Dallas Morning News: “When we wanted to send the details to the agent, the agent told us to stick it up our ass.”
Parsons’s agent, David Mulugheta of Athletes First, told Hoyt that he was aware of Jones’s remark. Mulugheta declined to comment.
Jones later clarified. “We were going to send it over to the agent and the agent said don’t bother because we’ve got all that to negotiate,” Jones said. “Well, I’d already negotiated. I’d already moved off my mark on several areas. And so the issue is frankly that we already had the negotiation in my mind, and now the agent is trying to stick his nose in it.”
But the agent is supposed to “stick his nose in it.” Despite Jerry’s chronic — and unchecked, by the NFL or the NFL Players Association — habit of negotiating directly with players, Parsons has an exclusive representative for the purposes of any and all negotiations. Jones should not be talking directly to the player. Nothing that Jones thinks the player has agreed to is binding.
So, yes, if Jerry wants to reduce to writing the terms of a contract he thinks he negotiated directly with Parsons, Jones should (to use his terminology) stick it up his ass.
It’s becoming more and more clear that Jones hopes to kick the can through the 2025 season, paying Parsons $24 million under his fifth-year option and then tagging him once. Or twice.
“We really have three years to work this out,” Jones told Irvin. “I did that with Dak [Prescott] . . . the precedent is handling it like Dak. In this particular case, Micah comes in and plays on his contract, and if he doesn’t it’s very costly.”
A different precedent applied to players like running back Ezekiel Elliott in 2019 and receiver CeeDee Lamb. Both got their contracts without having to finish their rookie deals. Both held out to make that happen.
Because Parsons didn’t hold out, Jones is playing hardball.
More specifically, Jones is basically daring Parsons to not play. And Jones is betting that, when push comes to shove, Parsons will choose to play in 2025 at $24 million over claiming that a tight back will continue to sideline him.
Jones likely sees it as a no-lose proposition. If Parsons and Mulugheta finalize the contract Jones negotiated directly with Parsons in March, it’s a win for Jones. If Parsons plays for only $24 million in 2025, when the market at his position has spiked to $41 million per year, it’s a win for Jones. If Parsons doesn’t play — and if the Cowboys don’t have a good season — Jones can both blame the struggles on Parsons’s hold-in and keep the Cowboys in the middle of the local and nations media’s radar screen, thanks to the endless question of when and if Parsons will play.
This has always been the plan, in our view. Within the next two weeks, we’ll find out whether Parsons chooses Door No. 1, Door No. 2, or Door No. 3.
From Jones’s perspective, any of those doors advances his overall interests.
