After Thursday’s comments from Cowboys defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus caught the eye of former Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons, Parsons defended his reaction to Eberflus linking the team’s defensive performance to the sudden departure of Parsons via late August trade.
“Y’all want me to feel bad?” Parsons posted on Twitter. “Jerry Jones slandered my name to Cowboys media and national media for months. So I do think I can react to comment if I want to!”
In his usual Friday appearance on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Jones addressed Parsons’s remarks.
“I wish Micah the very best,” Jones said, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com. “I’d love to have Micah on the team. But we just couldn’t afford him. We wanted four or five players more than we did him. But he’s outstanding. I understand his sensitivity and can even understand these comments.”
They say business isn’t personal. But the Parsons business became personal, once Parsons refused to reduce to writing the deal he supposedly agreed to in direct conversations with Jones. In turn, Jones refused to negotiate with Parsons’s agent, David Mulugheta.
The Cowboys, in our view, had banked on Parsons playing under his fifth-year option, kicking the can to 2026 for a possible franchise-tag dance. When it became clear that Parsons would refuse to practice or play due to a back injury, the Cowboys decided to get what they could for Parsons, in lieu of paying him a market-level deal that would have been much more expensive than the fifth-year option now and the franchise tag later.
Along the way, things were said. Feathers were ruffled. That’s how Jones, first, tried to get what he wanted and, second, played the P.R. game when it became clear that the only move was to move on from Parsons.
More than two months after the trade happened, Jones took a clear shot at Parsons while praising former Cowboys Michael Irvin and DeMarcus Ware.
“Not one time, not even in the hottest of days and two-a-days in August in Texas, between eleven in the morning or when they quit practicing or four in the afternoon, did I never see any one of these two go over and lay on a damn training table in front of a million people,” Jones said. “Never. It’s not in their makeup. . . . It’s just not in their makeup. . .
“And you’d like to think if you’re going to be [paying] the highest that’s ever been paid for something in football, you could get that. And when you don’t have it and you pay the highest that’s ever been in football, you really got a problem.”
Jones was still trying to justify trading Parsons. And, yes, that included slandering his name by suggesting that Parsons isn’t worthy to be the highest-paid defensive player in football, tying it to the fact that he was taking a stand to get the contract Jones refused to give him.
For Parsons, it’s understandably personal. For Jones, it’s all business. And his business interests required him to make it personal with Parsons. Which explains why Jones isn’t bothered by Parsons’s natural reaction to Jerry’s tactics.
Still, the message to other players should be obvious. Starting with receiver George Pickens.
If you don’t do what Jerry wants you to do, he’ll eventually slander your name, too.
