FRISCO, Texas — Going forward, the Lion's den will be in Wisconsin and not in Texas. Micah Parsons was traded by the Dallas Cowboys to the Green Bay Packers one week ahead of the regular season opener, in a bombshell move that hit the NFL headlines like mortar rounds.
Plenty of questions were generated by the decision to send a perennial All-Pro out of town, and to a bitter rival within the same conference, no less, and owner and general manager Jerry Jones took to the podium only hours after the breaking news to explain his team's position on the matter.
"This was a move to get us successful in the playoffs," said Jones. "This was a move to be better on defense, stopping the run. This was a move to, if we get behind, to not be run on. It was a deliberate move, a well thought out move to make this happen."
What Jones is alluding to is the acquisition of three-time Pro Bowl nose tackle Kenny Clark, packaged in a deal that also included two first-round picks over the next two offseasons. He went on to point out other angles he and the front office sifted through before pulling the trigger on a trade that is being described as one of the most shocking in Cowboys and NFL history.
"The other thing that I would say is that we have a chance to get a minimum of three, and it could very easily be as many as five. really top players," said Jones. "And you've got to look at three to five to one, over who's going to help you win the most. It was strictly that, because it's not only the draft picks that you have as currency, but it is the available cap room. And we can take that available cap room we were going to use for Micah, and we can pay three to five players with that."
A full breakdown of the Cowboys' current cap space and implications can be found here in the Impact piece penned immediately following the trade, but the summation is that Dallas will move forward with roughly $44 million in cap space prior to accounting for the $3 million hit stemming from Clark's contract.
That's a hefty sum indeed, but it only matters if it's used to better the team, as the Joneses are well aware — a point he made nudged toward when describing the number of players the Cowboys could use the money on instead of Parsons, be it in extending someone on the roster soon and/or in free agency.
"I think we're better off having those numbers of players," Jones explained. "I think we're better off from [the] attrition [standpoint]. As you know, this game is, in many cases, built around planning injury and knowing that you're gonna have injury. You've got five players rather than looking at one player. You've got better odds of having availability.
"So this gives us the best chance. And we've tried it in a way, that way. And our fans, as well as my mirror, are saying, 'Come on, let's change something up. Let's do something a little different here.'"
There's the added component of potentially flipping the acquired picks into a trade for more help before the deadline this November, a notion the Joneses said to "not rule out", or potentially in a package to move up in next year's draft, or to move down to acquire more picks, so forth and so on.
The key word here, per the Cowboys' front office, is "options".
They feel as if they have many more of them now, though they also made it clear they could and would have signed Parsons to a record-setting deal, one with more guaranteed money than the $132 million given to him by the Packers, if negotiations didn't go awry this summer. And once they did, they clearly became irreconcilable, even if there are no hard feelings involved from either side going forward.
"First of all, I want to tell you that I really like Micah," said Jones. "I appreciate the four years that we've had him here. He's a great player. And so we are very appreciative of the fact that he's a great player. There's no question that I could have signed him.
"And so, we all know that to have agreements, all parties have to agree. This was by design. I did make Micah an offer. It wasn't acceptable, and I honor the fact that it wasn't done in the way that he wanted to do it through an agent. So, he was a made an offer. There's not an ounce of vindictiveness.
"There's no bad feelings on my part about the fact that we didn't come together for an agreement."
And, with that, Parsons takes his talents to Lambeau Field and will begin preparation to also take on the Cowboys for the first time in his NFL career, when the Packers visit AT&T Stadium on Sept. 28 on Sunday Night Football.
"Well I had to play Emmitt Smith when he was a Cardinal," Jones said. "We know Micah will be very problematic, and I suggest we get ahead and run the ball."
Given he's racked up a record-setting 52.5 sacks in his first 63 games, it's safe to say that's a sound plan of attack if the Cowboys want to keep Parsons from reintroducing himself to Dak Prescott in four weeks from now.
In the meantime, all eyes move to the Brian Schottenheimer and Matt Eberflus, and their ability to navigate the fallout from one of the most controversial divorces in recent memory.
