The numbers to know are 10 and 24.
We are 10 days removed from Micah Parsons publicly requesting a trade from the Dallas Cowboys and 24 days away from the team beginning their 2025 campaign. As you are aware, that will take place on the road against the Philadelphia Eagles, a team who has mastered the front office operations of football as they raise their second Super Bowl banner.
Micah Parsons is the best player on the Cowboys and if he played for the aforementioned Eagles, he likely would have had a contract extension taken care of long ago. That is simply the way that Philadelphia operates.
The Cowboys operate very differently, though. Dallas believes that they are in the right at this moment in time for (gestures at the sky) reasons and appear ready to hold onto that as long as possible.
ESPN’s Adam Schefter spoke on this matter for the most recent time on Monday morning over on Get Up. Schefter noted that there is no deal in sight between the parties and openly pontificated on the ambiguity of it all.
“No deal in sight. If there’s no deal in sight… what’s going to happen? Is Micah going to play in the opener? We’ve already heard Jerry Jones wonder about whether Micah would be out there on opening day.”
“What would be the Cowboys’ plan here? Well, if obviously they can’t get a long-term deal done, and the two sides are not even talking about it right now, then they can always have Micah this year… if he plays. And they have the franchise tag after this year. They’d have the franchise tag the next year. They have his rights, essentially, for three years. At some point in time you have to wonder if they would look to trade him.”
“Now they’ve been very opposed to that idea publicly saying, we’re not interested in trading him. He’s not going to be dealt. But you can’t not sign the guy and then you can’t not trade him. It’s one or the other. Either you’re going to work on a long-term deal, which they haven’t done with him, or you’re going to have to explore other options. Which they haven’t yet, but there are people around the league who wonder if they’ll get to that point in time.”
“Clearly, status quo, the way it is right now is not going to hold up. And so I think both sides are disappointed with the other side, we’re waiting to see where this goes. And there’s no deal in sight right now.”
Much of Schefter’s thoughts here are of factual variety as well. He is openly questioning what the plan is here, something we do quite often around the BTB universe when it comes to this team.
Where Schefter has a point that is opinion-based is in him saying that it is sort of time to you-know-what or get off the pot. The idea of trading Parsons is preposterous in this author’s opinion, but if you really are that far apart on what you each deem to be is fair and worthy (particularly so if you won’t even talk about it), then why not begin the process of capitalizing on the situation? This is at its core our biggest criticism of the front office. No moves, ones we both agree and disagree with, are done in the name of proactivity and achieving the highest level of efficiency possible. They are always catch-up moves.
In the conversation on the ESPN panel, Dan Orlovsky suggested that the Cowboys may not want to pay Parsons. To be clear he was searching for answers amid this chaos and was wondering whether or not they simply do not see eye-to-eye on overall things and that this may be why we are where we are. When you are this deep down the rabbit hole you have to start playing by the relative rules of engagement.
Schefter interrupted him and summarized the chaos of the situation well.
Think about that for a second. Whether the Cowboys had or have any interest in trading Parsons (or getting an extension done!) wouldn’t it make sense to, crazy idea here, do something in the aftermath of something as intense as a trade request? To do, I don’t know, literally anything?
The panel continued to discuss the matter and Mike Tannenbaum threw out (preposterously, in my opinion) that Brian Schottenheimer should issue a decree to Parsons that if he is not on the field working in the next 10 days that he is not going to play in the opener regardless. Again, that seems like a silly idea, but the point here is that it relates to the football operations of this entire thing. You know, the important part.
That is why people are so frustrated that this situation continues to fester. The football gets compromised a little bit more each and every day.
