One week after labeling any trade talk around Micah Parsons “pure B.S.” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is reportedly willing to listen to offers for the All-Pro pass rusher, ESPN reported Thursday.
Dallas is scheduled to kick off the season next Thursday at Philadelphia, and Parsons hasn’t been a participant in a full practice since last season.
Parsons requested a trade in one of the multiple escalatory landmarks in the ongoing staredown with Jones over his contract. The Cowboys have held firm that Parsons is under contract and should be on the field now and during the 2025 regular season if he wants to address a long-term deal.
Parsons played the first four years of his career with the Cowboys. This season, he’s on the fifth-year option in his rookie contract worth $21.324 million in 2025. He reportedly filed a grievance earlier this year, arguing he should be viewed as a linebacker — not a defensive end. The option salary for a linebacker is $24 million.
Jones, who made clear he prefers to talk contracts directly with his players and not their paid representatives or agents, stated publicly that he and Parsons agreed to the parameters of a deal in the spring. ESPN pegged the terms of the five-year extension at an average of $40.5 million per season.
The highest-paid defensive player in terms of average annual value is Steelers pass rusher T.J. Watt ($41 million). Browns defensive end Myles Garrett signed a new deal earlier this year to increase his annual average pay to $40 million.
A premium on proven pass rushers guarantees the asking price for the 26-year-old Parsons will be astronomical.
The closest scenario in recent years brought outside linebacker Khalil Mack to the Chicago Bears in a 2018 trade that fetched the Raiders a treasure trove of draft picks: a pair of first-rounders, a third-round pick and a sixth-rounder. The Bears received Mack, then 27 years old, a second-round pick and a conditional draft pick before signing him to a six-year contract worth $141 million.
Beyond the team-exercised and fully guaranteed contract option for 2025, the Collective Bargaining Agreement allows Jones and the Cowboys to use the franchise tag in successive years (2026, 2027), which is the fine print behind Jones’ math that Parsons is under team control for the next three years.
Parsons appears to have soured on the idea of playing in Dallas during a tumultuous month with his only pro football employer to date. On Aug. 1, Parsons posted a statement to social media that he “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.”
More recently, he eliminated references and images containing the Cowboys and their logo from his social media accounts.
Parsons’ profiles in his Twitter and Instagram pages both tout his Penn State background with a “TBD” now in place of the Cowboys as his employer. And on TikTok, he posted a video that contained a photo gallery of Parsons, in his Cowboys uniform, that contained game photos that could have been taken as the All-Pro both waving goodbye and blowing kisses.
In the background played the audio of words once spoken by retired NBA great Allen Iverson as he discussed trade rumors:
“Imma win wherever I go,” Iverson is heard saying. “Wherever I go, imma win. I don’t care where I go. I don’t give a damn what team I go to, imma win. Imma win regardless, it don’t matter.”