If you thought the Micah Parsons discourse was nauseating before, it's going to reach deafening levels as the Dallas Cowboys square off against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday Night Football.
The storylines write themselves, but NBC leaned into the narrative by inviting none other than Jerry Jones on Football Night in America before kickoff. Fittingly, former Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett asked Jones to explain why he decided to trade away Micah Parsons. It went about how you'd expect: Jones talking himself in circles and spewing absolute nonsense.
"I thought that this year was very possible for us to have the kind of success that our fans want to have," Jones said about the Cowboys' Super Bowl hopes without Parsons.
Cowboys' Jerry Jones gives another bizarre explanation for trading Micah Parsons
Jones went on to say that Parsons (!) got caught up in the numbers. That verbiage is used in reference to training camp standouts who are on the roster bubble at a deep position, and yet, here we are.
"I'm fully aware of... we had him four years... as I said earlier... that didn't get us to a Super Bowl... we've got to try something different to try to get there."
Jones is still confident that Dallas can compete for a championship and maintains that he would rather have three or four players than one awesome player. You can find some logic in that explanation if you dig deep enough, but sprucing up the roster could've been accomplished without trading one of the best players in the world. And it was painfully obvious over the last few years that Parsons was holding the Cowboys' defense together by himself.
Parsons wouldn't fix everything, but you can't help but wonder if Dallas would have another win on its 2025 resume if he were wreaking havoc off the edge. Without Parsons, this is one of the worst defenses in franchise history, right up there with the unwatchable 2013 and 2020 seasons. That is despite Kenny Clark, acquired in the trade, playing exceptionally as the nose tackle in Matt Eberflus' defense.
Unfortunately for Cowboys fans, this won't be the last time Jones attempts to rationalize the move. The narrative will dissipate some after tonight's matchup and the subsequent fallout, but it's going to be a thorn in this franchise's side for a long, long time.