The Packers placed edge rusher Micah Parsons on injured reserve on Wednesday, the team announced.
The four-time Pro Bowler tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in Sunday’s loss to the Broncos. He will undergo season-ending surgery.
He faces a prognosis of at least the next nine months in rehab.
Parsons injured his knee on a non-contact play late in the third quarter, trying to change directions while chasing quarterback Bo Nix.
In 14 games this season, Parsons registered 12.5 sacks with 12 tackles for loss, 26 quarterback hits and two forced fumbles.
He has missed only five games in his career, with one of his absences because of a positive COVID test.
The first rule of Tank Club is don’t talk about Tank Club. On Tuesday, Cowboys owner/G.M. Jerry Jones grazed the third rail by acknowledging the very real temptation for non-playoff teams to tank.
Asked on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas whether the Cowboys will rest players like quarterback Dak Prescott down the stretch once their less-than-one-percent playoff probability sinks to zero-point-zero, Jones said out loud the thing the league office would prefer to remain quiet.
“Well, we will worry about that circumstance when the time comes, but a win is very, very important in the NFL,” Jones said. “And a win is important to me, and a win does a lot of positive things. I don’t care when it happens. And we owe it to that mirror and we owe it certainly to our fans that we want to walk out there and be competitive. We will not try for a draft position. We won’t be looking at anything like that. We’ll be out there playing football and we’ll bring them to play. So that’s a longwinded way of saying, we’ll play football under whatever the circumstances are.”
But playing to win isn’t an absolute. Jones admitted that he will consider strategically resting players if/when there is a postseason game looming.
“If we were getting ready to go into the playoffs, which is the circumstances you’re talking about, is being eliminated from the playoffs, if we were getting ready to go into the playoffs and in three weeks, we were lining up for our first playoff game, you might give [Prescott’s] status a lot of consideration,” Jones said. “Because you can go in there and be healthy for the playoffs.”
But aren’t wins important, Jerry? It’s very hard to reconcile the idea that winning overrides getting better players in the foreseeable future with the idea that winning yields to future games in the immediate future.
As much as the NFL tries to maintain a firewall between late-season meaningless games and the offseason tentpole that is the draft, more and more fans realize that, if their favorite team is eliminated from playoff contention, it’s better to lose than win. It’s better to rise than fall in the first-round priority. Plenty of ardent, year-in-and-year-out fans would prefer a late-season loss to a late-season win.
And with 13 of 32 teams already eliminated from playoff contention and two more (Cowboys and Colts) teetering, it’s impossible to overlook the lure of strategically losing.
It’s always been there. In an age of legalized, normalized, and heavily monetized gambling, the pragmatic value of taking the L undermines the inherent integrity of every game. And even if a team insists it’s trying to win, the truth could be otherwise.
Matt Eberflus is the Cowboys’ third defensive coordinator in three seasons. They will have a fourth defensive coordinator in four seasons if they decide to move on from Eberflus after the season.
Jerry Jones was effusive in his praise for Eberflus earlier this season despite the defense’s struggles. But after J.J. McCarthy passed for 250 yards and two touchdowns — without being sacked — in the Vikings’ 34-26 win over Dallas on Sunday night, the Cowboys owner sounded more uncertain about Eberflus’ future.
“We let their quarterback have a big day on us,” Jones said Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com. “That wasn’t the plan. We could have used more pressure, without question, at different times. The result was that we let him make some pretty significant plays out there, plus, he played pretty well. It seems like we’re always saying that about these [opposing] quarterbacks. Some of them hadn’t played as well, but when they play us, they play better. I think that’s telling, too.”
The Cowboys rank 29th in total defense, including 32nd against the pass.
“Candidly, just to be very up front about it,” Jones said, “I think if we could have gotten this defense in better shape earlier that we could be sitting here with the kind of wins that would’ve not had us in this tight spot.”
The team has created some of its own problems on defense by the turnover at the coordinator position. Players are brought in to fit a scheme that is gone the next year.
The Cowboys also didn’t help Eberflus by trading edge rusher Micah Parsons just before the start of the season.
Dallas was expected to play more man defense to fit what cornerbacks Trevon Diggs and rookie Shavon Revel, among others, do best.
Jones didn’t accept explanations or excuses, though, believing that coaches should adapt their scheme to the players they have.
“I’m satisfied that the players we have fit what we’re trying to do really well,” Jones said.
It’s been a long time since Jones has fired any coach. His MO is to let the coach’s contract run out before moving on.
The Cowboys, though, did fire defensive coordinator Mike Nolan after only one season, in January 2021, after a historically bad season.
The NFL’s offseason and preseason featured an ugly and contentious confrontation between Cowboys owner/G.M. Jerry Jones and former Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons. The situation ended in the shocking trade to the Packers, and the sniping from both men continued for weeks thereafter.
With Parsons suffering a season-ending ACL tear on Sunday, Jones has opted to be far more charitable in his expression of sympathy than at least one other high-profile person has opted to be this week regarding an unrelated tragedy.
“I’m sad for Micah,” Jones said Tuesday morning on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com. “That’s quite a challenge. I wish him the very best on his recovery. Michael Irvin said when he had his [ACL] surgery during, I think, his second year with the Cowboys, he said he realized what football really did mean to him. And he said the surgery really launched him into the best part of his career, because he got to feel what it might look like not to play again. There’s a lot of ways you can couch this thing. But, Micah, I wish you the very best.”
Whether Jerry truly means it doesn’t matter. He said it. At a time when some folks can’t even muster the ability to suppress their own personally-held poisonous beliefs, it’s nice to see someone choose to say the right and honorable thing.
They can’t all be winners, can they?
As the NFL continues to make Christmas a pro football holiday, the trend has potential pitfalls. Including the very real possibility that the games to be played on December 25 will have little if any meaning to either or both of the teams involved.
Recent developments have made this season’s three-pack of games something far less enticing than gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
It will get started in nine days with Cowboys at Commanders. Both teams are more cooked than overdone roast beast.
Then comes Lions-Vikings. Detroit is scrambling to avoid missing the playoffs, which gives the game a little pop. The Vikings — who have won two in a row and are 6-8 — were eliminated on Sunday, when the Bears beat the Browns.
The day ends with the Broncos at the Chiefs. With the Chiefs eliminated. And with Gardner Minshew playing quarterback for the home team. Why would folks in Kansas City want to venture out on Christmas night to watch that one?
For in-home viewers who root for other teams, there’s a certain schadenfreude factor that will prompt those who had developed Chiefs fatigue to tune in and relish what should be a long night for the franchise that had appeared in three straight Super Bowls and five of the last six. Still, it will hardly be must-see streaming for Prime Video.
One factor is the calendar. With Labor Day landing on September 1 this year, the season started as early as it ever does. Which puts Christmas in Week 17. Which makes it harder to effectively predict in May the games that will matter in late December.
For that reason, don’t be surprised if the NFL eventually builds flexibility into the Christmas games, like it does for the late-season Saturday when five games are flagged as candidates for the three standalone spots.
Few teams are eliminated and thus irrelevant by Thanksgiving. More teams are and will be out of it by the time Christmas rolls around. If the NFL wants to maximize the audience for those games, it will have to either hit the bull’s-eye in May, or it needs to have the ability to move the dart.
