Here’s how the NFL works, in a nutshell.
Every year, teams draft players. Each pick is a scratch-off lottery ticket. And when you get a winner, you don’t trade it in for more tickets.
Dysfunctional teams try to play that game, like the Bengals. And now the Cowboys.
Owner and G.M. Jerry Jones can filibuster all he wants (and he has . . . and he will), but the truth is that he screwed the pooch. He drafted a player who turned out to be great, and he turned him in for two chances at a player who isn’t a bust.
Jerry should know better. He’s an oilman. He never would have swapped a gusher for two possibly dry holes.
It doesn’t help that the Packers’ picks likely will come late in round one, in 2026 and 2027. While the pass/fail rate in that range remains roughly 50-50, the chances of finding a superstar there are slim.
And pay not attention to anyone pushing the idea that it’s good to get 2026 and 2027 draft picks because those classes will be so much better than 2025. First, no one knows that. Second, if the Cowboys had made Parsons available before the 2025 draft, they could have offered him to the Titans for a package including the No. 1 overall pick — and they could have taken Travis Hunter or Adbul Carter.
Carter would have had a better shot at replacing Parsons. Hunter would have made it unnecessary to later trade a third-round pick for receiver George Pickens.
The truth, as Jones himself confirmed it on Thursday night, is that the Cowboys wanted to kick the can through 2025, pay Micah $24 million (or $21.324 million), and figure it all out in 2026. When Jones dared Parsons to not play and it became obvious Parsons would sit, they need to cave in to his trade request.
And all they got to replace Parsons this season is Kenny Clark. Which will do nothing to keep the streak of not making the NFC Championship from inevitably hitting 30.
Beyond the question of whether history will look kindly or poorly upon the Micah Parsons trade, the manner in which Cowboys owner Jerry Jones handled Parsons and his agent, David Mulugheta, could leave a mark.
Here’s an unsolicited text that arrived from a long-time agent during Friday’s edition of PFT Live:
“You have no idea how damaging this episode is for the Cowboys as it relates to the entire agent community. We all talk and nobody would ever willingly steer their clients to that team. Make no mistake, they’ve never been a honest or good organization, but since [Jerry] so brazenly disrespected and went behind the back of a top player’s top agent, they are in serious trouble moving forward. This is really one of those ‘time to take the car keys away’ moments.”
Ultimately, money goes a long way toward getting players and agents to do business with a team. But that could require the Cowboys to overpay to get the guys they want. No team should want to have to do that.
Ideally, a team becomes the obvious choice when the dollars are equal. Even better, a team wants to be the preferred destination, even if other teams are offering more.
Jerry’s insistence that agents are simply bystanders and not equal partners will not endear him to other agents. He has displayed — for months — a fundamental lack of respect for agent David Mulugheta. And, yes, other agents have noticed.
Meanwhile, who ultimately won? Mulugheta took the high road by never taking Jerry’s bait. Mulugheta had a strategy. He implemented it. And he got Parsons a contract with a new-money average of $47 million per year. And he got Parsons the new team that, as a result of the chronic disrespect Jerry displayed, Parsons decided he wanted.
That won’t prompt the Cowboys to admit a mistake. They’ll claim they won, even if Parsons propels the Packers to a Super Bowl win and if the Cowboys keep watching NFC Championship games from home.
Look at it this way. The Cowboys rushed to throw a “this is fine” press conference last night in order to persuade media, and fans, that they got what they wanted and that they’ll be better for it.
Did the Packers feel compelled to convene the media and make the case for why they did what they did? No. They’re content to let the results speak for themselves.
As they likely will.
This is something that will unfold in apparent fashion based on how the Cowboys and Packers fare in the coming seasons. As it relates to free agency in 2026 and beyond, we’ll see if the Cowboys win the jump balls when competing with other teams.
Or if they’ll have to splash the pot a little more aggressively than others in order to convince players and agents to subject themselves to the same kind of disrespect that was displayed to one of the best players in the entire league.
These aren’t your father’s Packers.
The draft-and-develop Green Bay franchise has made a stunning all-in move, paying market value (and then some) to linebacker Micah Parsons and giving up a pair of first-round picks and defensive lineman Kenny Clark.
It’s a gutsy move for any team. It’s especially gutsy for the Green Bay Packers.
It becomes the first big decision for team president Ed Policy, who was willing to roll the dice while the car still smells new. It’s the kind of thing that a team without one owner might shy away from doing. Because it usually takes one owner — who doesn’t risk termination — to take a chance with a downside of that magnitude.
Parsons potentially becomes Green Bay’s new Reggie White. And White was less of a gamble, because he was the first high-profile unrestricted free agent. For Parsons, the Packers gave up the price for signing a franchise-tagged player, and then some. And they’ve given Parsons a massive new contract.
It’s a big deal for any team. It’s huge deal for the Packers. And it should make those who work for Policy wonder how else he plans to put his thumbprint on his new team.
The Cowboys were already underdogs against the Eagles in the first game of the 2025 NFL season, but the departure of Micah Parsons has shifted the line even more toward Philadelphia.
The Eagles are now 7.5-point favorites, via DraftKings.com. The line had previously been 6.5 points, which took into account that there was doubt about whether Parsons would end his contract dispute and play for the Cowboys. Now that Parsons has been traded to the Packers, bettors know the Eagles will be playing against a Cowboys defense that just traded away its best player.
The 7.5-point spread is tied for the biggest in Week One. The Broncos are also 7.5-point favorites against the Titans.
This will be the 19th time the NFL has opened the season with the defending Super Bowl champions playing at home on Thursday night. The defending champs have been favored in 16 of the previous 18 games, and the defending champs are 15-3 straight up in those games.
Jerry Jones insists the Cowboys got better Thursday despite trading a generational player to a conference rival. The owner cited the cap space, the draft picks and the defensive tackle the Cowboys got in return.
Dallas freed up $19 million by swapping Parsons for defensive tackle Kenny Clark and now have $42 million in cap space for 2025. That gives them room to sign some other players to contract extensions, most notably cornerback DaRon Bland and left guard Tyler Smith.
"[We got] a lot of capital that is required to build a team,” Jones said. “It takes many players, to be trite, to play in the NFL. It takes 11 on the field at the same time. It takes a minimum of 30 or 40 — at minimum — to have both offense and defense, not including players who are involved in our special teams. So, it takes more than one. You do have to allocate your resources whether it be draft picks or whether it be finances. There was no question in our mind that [Micah] could bring a lot of resources in a trade. That has been on my mind since we hired Brian [Schottenheimer]. So, there was no question.”
Jones said the Cowboys could use the two first-round picks now to trade for a player. (Yes, he and executive vice president Stephen Jones said this.) Or they could use those picks to get anywhere from “three to five” players. (Even though the Packers’ picks the next two years figure to be in the 20s or 30s.)
“Those draft picks could get top, Pro Bowl-type players,” Jones said. “Could. Not necessarily. Let me be quick to say: You won’t necessarily get those players. You’ve got to draft them or acquire them. But they can get us as few as three or as many as five outstanding players. Now, not only do they contribute in a game that needs a lot of players on the field — not to be elementary — but they also give you better odds that they’re going to be a high percentage of those are going to be available just from the standpoint of attrition or from the standpoint of just sheer limit on how far one player can go. Very few players are Deion [Sanders] playing a hundred plays a game.”
Clark, a three-time Pro Bowler, solves a big problem on the team. He immediately shores up a run defense that allowed more than 100 yards in 12 games last season and more than 140 eight times. As Todd Archer of ESPN pointed out, the Cowboys have allowed 425 rushing yards and six rushing touchdowns on 103 carries in their past three playoff losses to the 49ers (2021-22) and Packers (2023).
“Kenny Clark is a big part of this,” Stephen Jones said. “That was a big part of winning right now, and we feel like when you look at the frustration is we hadn’t been able to win the big games in the playoffs, and we think it is a direction 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 that we can make up for that.”
In the past four seasons, the Cowboys have made the postseason three times with a 1-3 record. Now, they’ve lost their best player, a player on a Hall of Fame trajectory.
But Jerry Jones said, with a straight face, that the Cowboys somehow became better today.
“In our judgment this gives us a better chance to be a better team than we have been the last several years,” Jones said.
The Cowboys went 7-10 last season but won 12 games for three consecutive seasons before that.
