For Micah Parsons’ first three seasons, Dan Quinn was his defensive coordinator with the Cowboys.
Parsons was a first-team All-Pro for two of those seasons, also winning AP defensive rookie of the year. He was No. 2 and No. 3 in defensive player of the year voting in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
So even though he’s now the Commanders’ head coach, Quinn knows Parsons well. When Quinn was asked how to combat someone like Parsons in a Tuesday press conference, Quinn asked, “Are you asking you what would I do if I were coaching him?”
“Sure,” the reporter replied.
“Yeah, I’d sit him this week on a short week,” Quinn joked.
Really, though, Quinn noted that limiting Parsons’ production starts with making sure the team knows where he is before every snap.
“[I]f you have a vulnerability in a spot, you want to make sure you can fortify that to his strengths,” Quinn said. “You don’t just leave it to chance and see what happens, you want to make sure there’s a plan to go into it.
“So, for teams like Green Bay, they’ve got a number of good players,” Quinn added. “And that makes it also more challenging when this one, and this one, and that one over there [are all good]. So when there’s just one player to stop, and [you] say, this is what we want to do — that’s easier than when there’s multiple people in different locations. So, in my experience, the best teams have a number of players that were high-level hitters, and now this one gets too much attention, you leave this one open — he’s going to shoot the three and make you pay. And you want to have a balance in how you do things to make sure that one player doesn’t get too much attention, but also enough that they don’t wreck the game.”
Parsons played only 45 percent of Green Bay’s defensive snaps in Week 1, but still was able to pressure Lions quarterback Jared Goff and pick up a sack.
We’ll see if the Packers raise Parsons’ playing time and how effective he is against his old coach on Thursday night.
