[UPDATE: In my haste to get this out yesterday I completely forgot about Kenny Clark. I added parts about his fit with Dallas and his cap hits to both teams]
News broke at end of business today that the Dallas Cowboys were trading star EDGE Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers for two first round picks and DT Kenny Clark. This is just about the biggest news possible in the NFL where trades of this magnitude do not happen very often. Let’s break it down from all angles.
Parsons New Contract
With the trade came news that Parsons would become the highest paid non-QB in the league by pretty much every metric. It is a 4/$188m contract that has a $47m AAV, $136m in guarantees, and what looks to be a $62m signing bonus. This changes everything for the market.
Everyone knew that Parsons was going to get to be the highest paid whenever he signed the deal. The problem was that the Cowboys kept waiting to do the obvious. He could have signed the Myles Garrett contract months ago (4/$160m) or the Justin Jefferson contract last year (4/$140m). Now everyone is going to want to pass the Micah Parsons contract. TJ Watt and Myles Garrett now sit at 2 and 3 in the highest paid non-QB rankings (an article I have been sitting on waiting for Parsons for a month now).
Jerry Jones
This was never supposed to happen. I know we are all Eagles fans, but it kind of feels like when Captain Hook looks at Robin Williams in Hook in disbelief that this old Peter Pan in front of him is supposed to be his “great and worthy opponent.” Jerry, is this what has become of the Dallas Cowboys? Are they really just the playground of an old man who is slowly letting his aggravations with the passage of time deter him from making good business moves?
Jerry has made it clear that he had a problem with this whole situation. He has been refusing to talk to Parsons’ agent throughout the negotiation, even casting aspersions at him through the media. He’s lucky that no one has filed a grievance against him for the conduct. If a player has representation, the team is only supposed to talk with that representation. Trying to go behind the agent’s back is bad news. It is simply not how business is done. For Jerry though, he seems to have it in his head that he is still in the oil fields making deals with a handshake. That’s just not how this works. For anyone thinking that is a sympathetic position, it’s not. These deals are done with agents to level the playing field. Jerry has signed thousands of contracts. Micah has signed just one. That’s why the agents are there.
It seems like Jerry got tired of paying his players at the top of the market and not winning. It’s probably not so much that he didn’t want to pay Parsons, he just really regretted paying Dak and CeeDee Lamb. It has been 30 years since his last championship. He wants to point fingers at everyone but himself.
When my dad got old, I saw him getting frustrated at situations that he used to handle with ease. He got mad that younger people were telling him what to do and not respecting his positions. I don’t think he ever realized he wasn’t respecting theirs either. He would try to force his agenda and things would go wrong and everyone just understood he was getting old. Everyone knew it but him. That seems like Jerry right now. He doesn’t want to play the NFL game that he has been on top of for decades anymore. Afterall, he’s Jerry Jones! That just doesn’t matter anymore.
The Cowboys
The Cowboys were already the 3rd best team in the NFC East and were not legitimate Super Bowl contenders. For every year that Cowboys fans think “it’s our year” it most certainly is not anymore. The defense was already somewhat of a weak point, but now the pass rush has completely disappeared.
They did pick up two future first round picks though. Unfortunately, they are probably going to be in the 20s rather than premium top 10 picks. One of the problems with trading a player of Parsons caliber is that the team that gets him is probably going to be very good for the foreseeable future. If they had decided to trade him earlier in the offseason (like a rationale team that didn’t intend on paying their star), they could have traded for a draft pick with certain value. Instead, they have to hope that the Packers will be worse than expected.
Kenny Clark is a 3-time Pro-Bowler but coming off a down season last year. PFF had him rated as the 85th best interior defender in the league (out of 219). By those metrics, he is …fine? The good news for Dallas though is that they are essentially paying him nothing. The 3/$64m contract he signed before last season came with a $17.5m signing bonus that is entirely on Green Bay. Also, he had a $7m option bonus for this season that is also entirely on Green Bay. All Dallas is paying him is his $1.3m base salary and a possible $1.7m in bonuses. Next year though, that jumps up to a non-guaranteed $8.8m salary and an $11m option bonus to be paid on the 3rd day of the league year. With those numbers, he is virtually guaranteed to be a one and done in Dallas. Good?
As for the future, they have a rogue owner who doesn’t seem to know how to negotiate with players anymore. That cannot be good for future free agents. If you are an agent, are you going to steer your players to Dallas knowing that the owner doesn’t know what’s going on anymore? Plus, the players just saw how they treated literally the best defensive player in the game. They not only didn’t sign him, but they didn’t even negotiate with him! The players see through this. It’s bad.
The players on the team now go into the regular season, just a week away, without their best player. That has to be deflating. Oh yeah, and they have to watch their biggest rival hang the banner of their latest Super Bowl victory. Not only is this team dysfunctional, but they are depressing too.
The Packers
Oh right, them. They just got Micah Parsons!!! This is obviously going to help their pass rush, but I think they have bigger problems on offense. Jordan Love is not a top 10 QB and they don’t have any receivers (If you want real Packers analysis, you should go somewhere else. I hate them for Tush Push reasons and can’t wait to go there this season).
What they are trying to do is to contend with the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings. Jared Goff can’t run so getting to him and making his life miserable could be a great way to short circuit anything that the Lions want to do. As for the Vikings, JJ McCarthy is basically a rookie who has all the weapons he could possibly imagine all around him. He is the only wildcard. The Packers will want to speed up the game for him, which makes Parsons something like a cheat code.
The Cap
The way this contract will likely work is more like a 5/$210m deal in that this season’s 5th year option will likely remain part of the contract rather than being voided. That allows the Packers to spread a ton of the cap hit over an extra year. Assuming a $62m signing bonus, that means $12.4m per season for each of the next 5 years for cap purposes. Instead of $188m over 4 seasons, it becomes $126m over 4 seasons which is more palatable. If they did it like the Eagles would do, the $31.5m each season would be an option bonus that splits it down to around $6m. Doing it this way basically adds an extra year to the cap. We have to wait until more details come out though to know for sure.
Kenny Clark’s cap situation with the Packers is pretty rough. Because he already collected his signing bonus and option bonuses for this year and last year, they are on the hook for $18m this year and $17m next year. That’s brutal. Why in the world was he included in this deal? Did Dallas insist on him? Why?
The Eagles
How can we not like this? The best non-Eagle in the division is gone now. I don’t think we ever had too much of a problem with Parsons, but it was mostly because we planned away from him. We had to change our offense to match his presence on defense. That’s not happening anymore.
On the downside, Parsons blew away TJ Watt and Myles Garrett for the highest paid non-QB. This is important because we are about 7 months away from paying our own star Jalen Carter. Is he going to break that number? Is it going to be 4/$200m instead of my predicted 5/$200m? It’s looking like it. It is going to be up to him.
Finally, it means that Dallas has lost its cache. Parsons is a star and he was on the biggest team in football. Who do they have now? No one believes in Dak Prescott. Lamb is very good, but not a star. So, who is the star now, Jerry Jones? Nope. Nothing. The star is the Eagles. Dallas did the right thing and got out of the way.
Philly Front Office 
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