Nearly seven years ago, an NFL framework for a Micah Parsons trade was created.
It involved a dynamic 27-year-old edge rusher who had entered the league as the fifth overall pick in the 2014 NFL Draft. In just four seasons, he shredded the league with 40 1/2 sacks, 84 quarterback hits, 68 tackles for loss and a dominant presence that demanded every offensive game plan be prioritized to stop him.
By the summer of 2018, when he began a holdout seeking the richest defensive contract in league history, his demand was bolstered by a Defensive Player of the Year nod in 2016, three Pro Bowls and three first-team All-Pro spots, including becoming the only player in history to lock down two first-team All-Pro spots on the same team, having captured that distinction at both linebacker and defensive end in 2015.
When it came time to work a contract extension, any suggestion of an impasse forcing a trade seemed absurd.
That player — the Oakland Raiders’ Khalil Mack — seemed to be untradeable. Either because the price tag would be too much or because Raiders ownership wouldn’t fathom dealing away one of the best young defensive players in the game. It all seemed wild.
And then Mack was flipped to the Chicago Bears on the doorstep of the 2018 season.
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It’s a noteworthy moment in NFL history that has some eerie overlapping circumstances with Parsons and the Dallas Cowboys. From Mack and Parsons both being elite, game-changing edge rushers, to a negotiating breakdown that has gotten dicey, to both Mack and Parsons demanding trades in the middle of the impasse.
Mack went from being unattainable to being traded. Now we have to question if Parsons’ future will go down the same avenue.
On that point, seven league executives polled by Yahoo Sports — including four general managers who have executed elite “star” level trades — all shared a common agreement when it came to Parsons: If he is ultimately traded, the basement price on him will start at the what the Raiders landed for Mack, then likely require a sweetener on top of it. Ultimately, the Raiders received two first-round draft picks, along with a third and sixth — in exchange for their superstar defender plus a second- and seventh-round pick.
“For the right team, if you’re right there [on the verge of a Super Bowl], I think you’d give up a little more [than the Mack trade],” one general manager said. “I think Dallas could get three firsts if it was coming from someone who is expecting their firsts to be at the bottom of the round. That’s still a lot for a defensive player. Or it could be two firsts and a quality starter, like when the [Carolina] Panthers packaged DJ Moore to get the first pick in the draft.”
The seven executives all had similar guardrails on a Parsons deal: at least two first-round picks, possibly three first-rounders if a team was certain he’d unlock a Super Bowl, or some combination of two first-round picks and other players and picks.
Interestingly, all seven executives expressed doubt that Parsons would ever be made available — despite his public proclamation earlier this month that his time in Dallas had come to an end.
Indeed, one general manager called a member of the Cowboys’ front office under the auspices of discussing something else, but poked around on Parsons just to see what the reaction would be.
“I didn’t get the sense he was really available,” the general manager said. “And it felt like if he was ever going to be, it was going to cost something nobody would be willing to give up — especially knowing whoever trades for him still has to sign him to a $45 million [per year] deal on top of it.”
Then the general manager asked a question about Cowboys owner Jerry Jones that seemed outlandish in the moment, but as time passes at least has to be pondered.
“There’s no way this is about the Netflix thing, is there?”
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The question was framed under the forthcoming debut of Jones’ Netflix docutainment rollout on Tuesday, giving the world a vantage into Jerry that is largely driven by Jerry. Titled “America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys,” the series will showcase Jones’ life, some of his private struggles along the way, his financial rise as an oilman, and above all else, his ownership of the Cowboys — with an emphasis on the 1990s Super Bowls — and his broader impact on the business of sports.
Jones has been working on the project with Netflix for more than two years, but others close to him who spoke to Yahoo Sports after the announcement of the project have speculated that Jerry first began conceiving of an aggrandizement project in either book or movie form as far back as his Hall of Fame election in 2017.
Now, in the midst of this training camp, with the oddity of how the Parsons negotiation has dragged on and also been a very public storyline fueled by Jerry himself, it has given rise to at least some skeptical — if not outright conspiratorial — thought experiments.
As the general manager framed it: “Is there a chance that they already know they’re going to give him everything he wants and hand him $140 million [in guaranteed money] to buy peace, but [Jones is] playing this out for all the attention it’s getting?”
The knee-jerk first answer to this kind of conspiracy theory is always “no” because it just seems, for lack of a better word, reckless. Especially given that Jones has taken an almost combative stance at times and also done nothing to suggest he’s interested in talking to Parsons’ agent, David Mulugheta. That said, there’s no denying that the Jerry vs. Micah back-and-forth has been the No. 1 story of this summer’s training camps, often appearing at the top of every morning show across sports networks, trending on social media and eating up endless blocks of NFL podcasts. And this has now gone on for nearly three weeks straight, with Jones occasionally freshening the topic either with his own words or responding to either Parsons or someone else’s commentary on the situation.
It’s hard to quantify what that attention is worth to the Cowboys. But it’s even more difficult to quantify what it’s worth to Jerry himself — given that he really doesn’t believe in negative publicity and would naturally, one way or another, try to raise up a few media hype tornadoes on the doorstep of his documentary. His willingness to gamble for the sake of marketing success is otherworldly and demonstrable over the expanse of his ownership of the Cowboys.
And then you have Jones saying things like this ahead of his Netflix premiere in Los Angeles earlier in the week:
“I do believe if we’re not being looked at, then I’ll do my part to get us looked at,” Jones said during a red carpet event prior to the screening of his Netflix project. “The beautiful thing for networks or, if you will, streaming companies is that the NFL is a 365-day-a-year interest factor. A lot of programming, you have to spend as much to promote it as you do to make it. The Cowboys are a soap opera 365 days a year. When it gets slow, I’ll stir it up. It’s wonderful to have the great athletes, have the great players, but there’s something more there. There’s sizzle. There’s emotion. And if you will, there’s controversy. That controversy is good stuff in terms of keeping and having people’s attention.”
Take that and reflect on how the Parsons negotiation has played out over the past few weeks. Now consider the maximum level of attention it has wrangled at the most uncommon of times: On the cusp of Jones debuting his media opus. If Jerry turns around after the launch of this Netflix series and signs Parsons for the max level money it will always have taken, what will he have lost? But in his own words, what valuable commodities will he have won along the way?
The soap opera. The eyeballs. The emotion. The controversy. The sizzle.
The definition of America’s Scheme: The Gambler and His Cowboys.
