Shocking. Stunning. Surprising. Startling. Sensational. Staggering. Splendid. Smashing (we certainly can't forget about the Cheeseheads in the UK). Take any one of these "S" words you like, and it could be used to describe what went down between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys on Thursday as it pertains to superstar edge rusher Michael Parsons.
Here's another one for you: Swindle. Because that's exactly what Green Bay general manager Brian Gutekunst did to Cowboys owner/GM/president/hypeman/documentary subject Jerry Jones, sending just a pair of first-round picks and soon-to-be 30-year-old defensive tackle Kenny Clark to America's Team in return. Yes, Clark will be missed after spending nine years in Green Bay, but business is business.
And here's yet another one: Super, as in Super Bowl, which Dallas hasn't won (or even played in) since the end of the 1995 season. And with Michael Parsons now out of the mix, fans of America's Team are likely to watch that futility streak continue. The Packers, meanwhile, have seen their odds to win Super Bowl 60 get significantly shorter in the aftermath of this franchise-altering development, which only makes sense when you acquire a generational talent like Michael Parsons.
His name is Michael, right? I mean, that's what Jones called him several times during his post-trade presser.
Okay, we'll stop now. I obviously know his name is Micah Parsons, as does every other NFL fan on the planet. But the Michael thing was just too easy to pass up. And let's get real here. Jones has made extremely easy to make jokes at his and the Cowboys' expense for quite some time now.
But I'm not here to launch a full-fledged attack on Jerry, as there's plenty of that going on right now. And some of it is jusy way too harsh. Look, I'm all for fandom and being invested in what your favorite teams are doing, as I truly believe sports can provide a wonderful outlet from the grind that is daily life.
That said, if the outcome of an NFL game being played by strangers making millions of dollars ($47 million per year in Parsons' case now) who don't really care what you think genuinely affects that day-to-day life, it's time to reassess. But I'll jump down off my soapbox now.
Don't get things twisted. I am going to poke fun at Jones for some of the things he said on Thursday night here in a second. But he's getting personal attacks and even death threats thrown in his direction, which is absurd.
As a businessman, he's absolutely brillant. And anyone who says otherwise is just flat-out wrong. He bought the Cowboys for roughly $140 million in 1989. Actually, he only paid about $65 million for the team and another $75 million for the old Texas Stadium. And now, the team is worth $13 billion. That's the most valuable sports franchise in the world, by the way.
But should Jones still be handling any aspect of football operations? No, he shouldn't. And he made that abundantly clear in what we can only call the Michael Parsons presser, as his explanation for why he caved and dealt his best defensive player to the Packers was just laughable.
"This was a move to get us successful in the playoffs," Jones said during his 46-minute news conference. "This was a move to be better on defense, stopping the run. This was a move to, if we get behind, not be run on. And it was a deliberate move, a well-thought-out move to make this happen.
"In our judgment, this gives us a better chance to be a better team than we have been the last several years."
I'm sorry, what? So, that 48-32 loss to the Packers in the Wild Card Round after the 2023 regular season was because Michael Parsons—oops, I did it again (leave Britney alone, too, by the way)—wasn't good enough at helping the Cowboys stop the run? Good to know.
But wait, there's more. This one came from Stephen Jones, though.
"Kenny Clark is a big part of this," the Cowboys' executive vice president said. "That was a big part of winning right now. ... We hadn't been able to win the big games in the playoffs, and we think it is a direct connection to not being able to stop the run. And we think Kenny Clark is going to be a big piece to that. We felt like, because of our depth on the edge, as well as the ability to scheme pressure, that we could make up for Micah because obviously he's elite at rushing the passer."
Oh, Stephen, you're just as naive, aren't you?
Clark undoubtedly deserves all the credit in the world for what he brought to the Packers over the last nine years, racking up 458 total tackles between the regular season and postseason, 58 of which resulted in a loss, and earning three trips to the Pro Bowl.
But he's also coming off the worst season of his career. And while PFF grades certainly don't always tell the whole story, it undoubtedly deserves to be noted that Parsons earned a 65.5 run defense grade in 2024, while Clark ended his ninth campaign with a mark of 58.4. I'm typically not a "just sayin'" kind of a guy, but just sayin'.
At the end of the day, what's done is done, and Cowboys fans are left trying to keep up with what the Joneses were thinking when making this deal. Packers fans, meanwhile, obviously have no problem with how things played out and are naturally ecstatic to have this generation's version of Reggie White wearing the Green & Gold.
As for Parsons, he's now busy dropping S-bombs of his own as he says "Sayonara" to Dallas—well, at least for now, as the Packers will be in Big D for a Week 4 Sunday Night Football matchup with the Cowboys. And one has to wonder if Jerry Jones will command first-year head coach Brian Schottenheimer to instruct Dak Prescott to simply hand the ball off on every offensive snap that night at AT&T Stadium.
Because if we've learned anything this week, it's that Michael Parsons can't stop the run.