The Cowboys aren’t looking back on the Micah Parsons trade with regret.
Dallas dealt Parsons after months of tension between the two sides amid a lack of process on a contract extension, resulting in the star defensive end requesting a trade. Parsons was sent to Green Bay in exchange for two first-round picks and Kenny Clark, and he signed a four-year, $188 million deal that made him the league’s highest-paid non-quarterback at the time (Parsons’s salary record has since been broken by Will Anderson Jr.).
Nearly nine months after sending the team’s best defensive player to the Packers, the Cowboys feel good about the return they’ve garnered. The Cowboys have acquired Clark and converted the first-round picks into DT Quinnen Williams, edge Malachi Lawrence, CB Devin Moore and LT Overton.
“We feel really good about it,” Stephen Jones said of the Parsons trade on Mad Dog Sports Radio. “Obviously much respect for Micah and what he stands for, how he plays and the caliber of player he is. At the same time we feel good about what we’ve added via that trade. You look at guys like Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark, they’re alpha players who not only are great players on the field, but they’re leaders in the meeting rooms, how they go about their business in the offseason, just bring great leadership to this team.”
Jones also raved at several of the other key pieces they’ve added defensively as of late, such as safety Caleb Downs, who they selected with their own first-round pick. Downs was one of the best defensive players in the draft, and Jones sees believe he has the character to “make everyone around him great.” Jones also expressed that they are fired up about second-year edge Donovan Ezeiruaku.
The Cowboys will certainly need strong contributions from those players as they look to improve a defense that ranked last in EPA per play, passing yards and points allowed per game in 2025.
“I’m optimistic that we have the right pieces in place to go out. That ultimately the decision we made was that one player is not worth four or five good ones, and we feel like that's where we're going to end up here, in a good spot,” Jones said. “We had that opportunity there, didn’t feel like we were one player away last year but I certainly feel like we’re putting the pieces together to give us an opportunity to go do what our fans deserve, what we want, which is to try and go win the big trophy.”
Parsons made the Cowboys defense better, but he also covered up some of the unit’s ugly flaws. While retaining Parsons would have been beneficial for the unit last season, perhaps Dallas needed their issues on that side of the ball to be exposed. For the defense to be so bad that they fired Matt Eberflus and brought in a promising first-time defensive coordinator in Christian Parker. And for the defense to be so bad that the front office had to prioritize the position throughout the offseason and draft.
After all, the final four teams in the NFL last season—the Seahawks, Patriots, Broncos and Rams—all boasted strong defenses. The Rams featured the worst defense of the group, and they invested heavily in their secondary—the weakest part of the unit—to better contend in 2026. A great offense isn’t enough to contend in the NFL at this time, and the Cowboys are attempting to improve the defense as a whole, not just with one star.
In the end, it will all be a moot point if the pieces the Cowboys get in return for Parsons don’t pan out or make them a contender. The trade is complete—now it’s time for the revamped Cowboys defense to show the results on the field.
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EVA GEITHEIM
Eva Geitheim is an NFL writer at Sports Illustrated. Prior to joining SI in December 2024, she wrote for Newsweek, Gymnastics Now and Dodgers Nation. A Bay Area native, she has a bachelor’s in communications from UCLA. When not writing, she can be found baking or rewatching Gilmore Girls.
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