Micah Parsons wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy «for life.» The disputed nature of a March meeting with Jerry Jones helped chart a course for his exit.
additional reporting by Todd Archer, Rob Demovsky, Dan Graziano and Seth Wickersham
THE PIVOTAL MEETING that led to one of the most shocking NFL trades of the past decade occurred on a pleasant North Texas morning in mid-March, five months and a lifetime of ill feelings ahead of any deal being put to paper.
The agenda for the March 18 one-on-one in Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ office at The Star, the team’s headquarters in Frisco, Texas, between Jones and two-time first-team All-Pro pass rusher Micah Parsons remains in question. A source close to Jones says it was Parsons who asked for the meeting, and that the 82-year-old owner always understood the subject to be Parsons’ contract. After declaring in February 2024 that he wanted to be a Cowboy «for life», Parsons had been trying to reach an extension with the team, without success.
«Jerry and Micah had met periodically over the last four years to discuss business and leadership issues», the source said, noting that the then-25-year-old Parsons viewed Jones as a mentor. «Jerry loved having these discussions with Micah. But the meeting in March wasn’t that, despite Micah saying publicly later it was to discuss leadership. Micah told Jerry, ‘I want to come in and discuss where we are’, meaning a contract extension. So that was Jerry’s expectation.»
A source close to Parsons said this is «absolutely not» true and that Jones called Parsons in for a leadership meeting, only to steer the conversation toward contract talks. The source says Parsons directed Jones to talk details with his agent, David Mulugheta. However the conversation got to a contract extension, both parties acknowledge that it got there.
Over a three-hour meeting, Jones and Parsons discussed numbers, years and guaranteed money. Both sides expected to reset the market for edge rushers, topping the $40 million average per season and $123.5 million guaranteed that Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns had received nine days earlier. Parsons’ 52.5 sacks in his career are the fifth most in a player’s first four seasons. Jones said after Parsons left his office at The Star, the owner believed an agreement was done.
Later the same day, Parsons called Cowboys chief operating officer and co-owner Stephen Jones, Jerry’s son, in an attempt to get more money out of the deal, the source told ESPN.
«[Parsons] called Stephen and asked can we do this, can we change the numbers and up the guarantee», the source said. «He started negotiating. He asked for several different elements and increases. This became a negotiation that Micah was in charge of.»
Stephen Jones consulted with his father, and Jerry agreed to the sweetened terms. The Cowboys believed they had a deal in place with Parsons and would continue to insist that he had agreed to it. Though the exact terms aren’t known, Cowboys sources insist they offered more guaranteed money than the $136 million Parsons would get from Green Bay, albeit spread across a five-year extension, not the four-year extension the Packers would make.
«It was north of $150 million», the source said.
The Cowboys had been known to conduct contract talks without players’ agents present — a practice known around the league as «hotboxing.» Dak Prescott’s 2024 deal was one such negotiation, whereby the Joneses and the quarterback discussed Prescott’s place within the organization’s future and Prescott’s agent, Todd France, came in later to negotiate the finer details of a contract. («I never engaged in numbers», Prescott said.) The deal was eventually signed the day of Dallas’ first game of the season. If the Cowboys expected this negotiation to follow the same path, Mulugheta was about to confront them with a counterpoint.
Jones would say in August on Michael Irvin’s podcast, «We were going to send [the terms] over to the agent and the agent said don’t bother because we’ve got all that to negotiate.»
To this day, Parsons’ agency has never seen the final details or structure of the deal that Jones said he cut with Parsons in April, per a source close to Parsons. Jones and Mulugheta would never truly negotiate at any point. Dallas would simply say the deal is done; Parsons can have it if he wants it. (Mulugheta declined to comment for this story).
«I’m the one who has to sign the check and Micah is the one who has to agree to it», Jones said on April 1 at the NFL owners’ spring meeting in Palm Beach, Fla. «That’s the straightest way to get there, is the one who writes the check and the one who is agreeing to it talking.»
The Jones source says he had nothing against Mulugheta, though Jones insisted to reporters in Palm Beach that he didn’t know Mulugheta’s name, adding, «The agent is not a factor here, or something to worry about.» At that point, Jones was dug in because «Micah looked him in his eyes and said we have a deal.» The source relayed a feeling from Jones of, «Oh so that’s how they are going to do it. Micah is going to negotiate with us, we’re going to go up, we’re going to have an agreement, and then the agent says that’s the floor and we’re going to go from there?»
«Jerry was like, ‘Hell no. That’s not the way this is going to work.'»
Adam Schefter breaks down the massive Micah Parsons trade from Dallas to Green Bay.
WITH THE PARSONS situation seemingly at an impasse, the Cowboys readied themselves for the 2025 NFL draft in late April. Parsons’ future with the team was not an issue stressed by draft pundits or armchair analysts, most of whom had Dallas selecting a wide receiver with the No. 12 pick. The Cowboys would fill a different need by taking guard Tyler Booker, then in early May getting their receiver by making a trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers to obtain mercurial wideout George Pickens.
The benefit of hindsight suggests Dallas’ second-round selection had greater meaning than believed at the time, though a Cowboys source said the Parsons matter did not affect their draft board. Edge rusher Donovan Ezeiruaku, chosen with the No. 44 pick, came off a season in which he led the FBS with 62 quarterback pressures and had 16.5 sacks. Those seeking subtext behind the Ezeiruaku pick mostly noted that edge rushers Dante Fowler Jr. (signed on a one-year deal in March — the Packers were runners-up for his services, according to league sources) and Sam Williams were heading into contract years, and that the rookie could help ensure the future. Less meaningful to observers was the fact that Parsons was headed into a contract year too.
Although Jones would later say the team began discussing the idea of a Parsons trade in the spring, Dallas did not explore trade talks involving Parsons before the draft, per a Cowboys team source. For one, the contract negotiations were still fresh and the team harbored hope of Parsons accepting the previously discussed deal. The Cowboys also prefer to do trades postdraft when they believe other teams are less inclined to cling to personnel. The Pickens deal reinforced that philosophy.
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But the longer Parsons went without a contract, the less likely he and Mulugheta were to accept the terms Jones believed had been agreed upon in March — the edge rusher market had begun to skyrocket. In the weeks before the Jones/Parsons summit at the Cowboys practice facility, the Las Vegas Raiders’ Maxx Crosby (three years, $106.5 million, $91.5 million guaranteed) and Browns’ Garrett ($40 million per year and $123.5 million guaranteed) had inked new deals. By mid-July, the Steelers’ T.J. Watt would sign a three-year, $123 million extension that established him as the league’s highest-paid nonquarterback on an average salary per year basis.
Sources close to Parsons believed that he, more than three years younger than Garrett and five years younger than Watt, would blow those deals away. And a Cowboys source said the team got indications that it would prefer to «go last» in the pass-rush market, because prices were only rising.
As Jones watched the market spike around him, the Cowboys owner and GM grew increasingly comfortable letting Parsons play on his fifth-year option or trading him.
Balancing the cost of the entire roster was a factor in Dallas’ calculus. Only one team — the Cincinnati Bengals — has three players making at least $30 million per year. If the Cowboys had given Parsons more than $40 million annually, they would have had the league’s highest-paid defender, highest-paid quarterback in Prescott ($60 million per year) and one of the highest-paid wide receivers in CeeDee Lamb ($34 million).
If the Cowboys weren’t paying Parsons, it would make negotiating with in-house stars, most notably guard Tyler Smith and cornerback DaRon Bland, an easier proposition. Smith, a 2022 first-round pick, could get his extension after Year 3 in a way Parsons did not. Bland was signed to a four-year, $92 million extension on Sunday.
«It’s an allocation of money», Jones said the night the trade was completed. «So, we chose to have numbers of players that we could pay handsomely that would be those caliber of players, not young practice squad players. We’re talking players that can really compete.»
And while Parsons’ presence in the lineup was impossible to replicate — by expected points added per play from 2021 through 2024, the Cowboys were the NFL’s best defense with Parsons on the field and the league’s worst by the same metric when he was not — Dallas also believed there were times when his skills were counterproductive to the winning cause.
