The Micah Parsons Mess Is Jerry Jones’s Latest Act of Self-Sabotage

NFLNFL The Micah Parsons Mess Is Jerry Jones’s Latest Act of Self-Sabotage The Dallas Cowboys could’ve taken care of their star player years ago. Instead, they’re fighting with him. Fans know the pattern well. Getty Images/Ringer illustration

By Nora Princiotti Aug. 4, 6:15 pm UTC • 7 min

It is August, and so, like a bird called to migrate, Jerry Jones has begun his near-annual ritual of negotiating against himself. As it was last year, the year before, and many times before that, Cowboys training camp has opened with the top story about the team involving a star player’s contract holdout, one that could easily have been avoided but for Jones’s kink for self-sabotage. Some families just go to the Cape!

This year, it’s defensive end Micah Parsons—he of the four Pro Bowls in four seasons and mere 26 years of age—who is entering the fifth and final season of his rookie contract without a new deal and who publicly requested a trade last Friday.

Thank you Dallas 🦁👑 🙏🏾! I pic.twitter.com/EUnEj9uRUt — Micah Parsons (@MicahhParsons11) August 1, 2025

According to Parsons, he’d hoped to negotiate a contract extension after his third season—which ended with him becoming a three-time All-Pro. (Note that, at the time, absolute top dollar for a premier defensive end was Nick Bosa’s $34 million per year.) But back then, the Cowboys weren’t interested.

Parsons said he initially wanted to open negotiations again after last season but, on the advice of his agent, David Mulugheta, ultimately chose to wait for several other top defensive ends, like Maxx Crosby, Myles Garrett, and T.J. Watt, to reset the market with their new contracts. That advice was sound; all three have since signed new deals that, at signing, made each player the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL and pushed the threshold for a record-setting deal by annual value into the low $40 millions. Crosby’s deal is for three years and $35.5 million per season, Garrett’s is for four years at $40 million per season and Watt’s, completed two weeks ago, is for three years and $41 million per season. In the past four years, dating to his rookie season, Parsons leads Crosby, Garrett, and Watt in sacks (52.5) and leads Garrett and Watt in pressures (330, tied with Crosby). There’s no sound logic for Parsons’s marketplace to do anything but build on those record-setting deals, so this should have been simple.

But Jones, both typically and apparently, couldn’t let it be simple.

Parsons said that this past March, he had a meeting with Jones that was supposed to be about “leadership,” but quickly became a setting for Jones to talk to him about his contract. Parsons engaged, thinking that they were simply having a conversation about priorities and what Parsons was looking for and not engaging in a formal negotiation without his agent present. What it seems like Jones intended was to ice out Parsons’s representation.

This is what Parsons said happened next:

“When my agent reached out and spoke to [senior director of salary cap/player contracts] Adam [Prasifka] he was told the deal was pretty much already done. My agent of course told him that wasn’t the case and also reached out to [Cowboys CEO] Stephen Jones. Again the team decided to go radio silent. At that point we decided we would allow the team to reach out to us whenever they decided they wanted to talk. Yet still not a call, email or text to my agent about starting a negotiation. … I stayed quiet but again after repeated shots at myself and all the narratives I have made a tough decision I no longer want to play for the Dallas Cowboys. My trade request has been submitted to Stephen Jones personally.”

So, here we are. Despite having asked for the trade, Parsons is currently at Cowboys training camp in Oxnard, California, though he is not working out due to a back injury. For his part, Jerry Jones hasn’t disputed much of Parsons’s account, including that the team hasn’t tried to negotiate with Parsons’s agent. In a characteristically rambling 16-minute interview with reporters at training camp on Saturday, Jones mainly emphasized that he believed he had made a deal during that informal meeting in March.

“When I grew up, I knew when momma wouldn’t let me do something, going to daddy and daddy letting me do it,” Jones said. “Then going back in and saying to momma, ‘Daddy said I could do it.’ That old momma/daddy stuff, we got here doing that by nature. We’re not going to do that.”

Well, OK then.

He also said some other stuff about street corners and Dez Bryant.

Jerry Jones' answer on why he doesn't want to deal with the agent of Micah Parsons in this negotiation involves street corners, Jay-Z and Dez Bryant:

“Because when we have a problem with the player, the agent is nowhere to be found. Jay-Z said that Dez would make all meetings.… — Nick Harris (@NickHarrisFWST) August 2, 2025

Cool.

Anyway, to recap: Having passed on a chance to re-sign their most talented player when the market rate was significantly lower, the Cowboys have now alienated that player to the point of a trade request because Jones thinks that adult men who risk their health with every snap are supposed to make life-changing professional commitments while sitting on daddy’s knee without their paid fiduciaries present. A hereditary illness in this family is thinking people want to work for you for free.

Of course, Jones has done this all before.

Last year, the Cowboys went into training camp with quarterback Dak Prescott and receiver CeeDee Lamb unsigned and holding out. The year before, guard Zack Martin was holding out for a raise. In 2019, Ezekiel Elliott famously spent his holdout from training camp in Cabo San Lucas.

In each case, the situation has seemed ugly and high-profile for a bit, with Jones doing a fair bit of flamboyant needling of his best players alternated with public hand-wringing about unreasonable demands. Ironically, in the case of Martin in 2023, one reason Jones gave for not being able to give him a raise was needing to save money to pay Parsons.

But also in each case, the Cowboys ultimately capitulated, agreeing to either a meaningful raise or a record-setting extension. History bodes pretty well for Parsons’s bank account.

It’s worth noting, though, that while Parsons’s situation is mostly the same old August song and dance for Dallas, there are a couple of meaningful new wrinkles here.

One, Prescott, Bryant, Elliott, Martin, and Lamb all held out into the summer before getting their deals, but none requested a trade. Parsons seems more willing than most to put pressure on the Cowboys.

Perhaps even more significantly, Parsons is in California with the team. Though not every player went as far as Elliott’s decampment to Cabo while holding out, most made themselves scarce or skipped some activities. Parsons isn’t participating—officially because of a back issue—but he’s with the team, spending time with his teammates, and taking some of Jones’s spotlight.

And while showing a willingness to take Jones on aggressively in the media is akin to fighting the man on his own turf, it still seems more likely than not to wind up as more leverage in Parsons’s favor, especially since he’s got his teammates voicing their sympathies.

“Never fails dawg,” Lamb tweeted Friday after Parsons’s request went public. “Just pay the man what you owe em. No need for the extra curricular.”

Prescott, too, has stood by Parsons.

“I will say that I think he deserves to get paid. I think he should get paid, and, ultimately, going off the history of what I’ve seen, he will get paid,” he said to reporters last week. “Hopefully, it’s sooner than later.”

Both Lamb and Prescott know that Jerry ultimately pays up.

That’s the likeliest outcome here, as well. Sure, the Cowboys could bank on using the franchise tag on Parsons if they can’t get to a deal, but that’s an ultimately expensive and risky way of handling the situation. Sure, another team could make a Godfather offer and Parsons’s request could wind up granted, but the Cowboys have so far said they have no plans to look for a trade.

“We’re in good shape. This is negotiation,” Jones said Saturday.

Business as usual, really, for a team that hasn’t made it out of the divisional round in 30 years despite the two winning lottery tickets of a fourth-round pick (Prescott) and an undrafted free agent (Tony Romo) who became franchise quarterbacks, operating in the heart of the most football-mad state in the nation with a tax incentive for players to work there.

Probably, this just ends as another operetta that costs money, irks players, denies new defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus time to adjust his best player to his new scheme, and generates attention. The cost isn’t that the deals don’t get done, and even though Jones clearly does hurt his bottom line by dragging these situations out while other deals get done and prices rise, they’re still usually worth it to the team. The real cost is the lost time, the sideshow, the upset players, and the feeling that the winning isn’t really the point. The Cowboys are a brand before they are a team, and part of that brand is that the owner operates as an unchecked loon. A few find this charming, most find it tiresome, and TV producers and the Philadelphia Eagles find it an absolute boon.

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