"You can have your quarterback damn near have a perfect game but still lose because guess what, the defense gave up, what, 40 points?"
Micah Parsons offered that quote in reference to Baltimore's heartbreaking Week 1 opener against the Buffalo Bills. After Green Bay's 27-18 win over Washington (which, honestly, felt even worse for the Commanders than the score indicated), Parsons went on to continue that if Jordan Love gives the Packers 20 points, then "we should be able to win that game".
And why is this all relevant to the Cowboys? Because just a week removed from posting a quarterback rating of 25.5, Russell Wilson put up 450 yards and three touchdowns on only four more throws on Dallas' defense. The same defense that, just two years prior, sacked Daniel Jones seven times in a single game and scored two touchdowns on their own. And believe you me, it's not like New York's offensive line was much better in Week 2 of the 2025 season.
While Micah Parsons' absence has been sorely felt over the early part of the season, Dallas' situation is even more dire than one would think. Even before any games were played, one could marvel at the impact of the Parsons trade on both the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys. And once the season started, even while injured, Parsons' presence alone was enough to galvanize Green Bay's defense to hold the mighty Detroit Lions offense to just 13 points, and have us question if Ben Johnson was the only thing that propped them up.
And how do the Cowboys respond? By essentially grasping at straws. Jadeveon Clowney is being brought on to resuscitate a pass rush that looked solid without Parsons through training camp, but has performed in the bottom third of the NFL in most major counting stats and averages. The logic is sound, at least in a Moneyball sort of fashion: without the star and anchor of your unit, replace his stats in the aggregate. But despite his posturing, Jerry Jones is learning a very important lesson.
You can't simply replace historical greatness
Micah Parsons joining the Green Bay Packers has drawn comparisons to their legendary acquisition of Reggie White, and while the juxtaposition is aggressive, to say the least, it is also pretty apt. What else do you say about a player that has posted 12 sacks every single season of his career? And, by the way, he is already on pace to comfortably match that number in 2025.
And while Green Bay did give away a lot to get him to Wisconsin, Parsons isn't your average defensive player. Paul Noonan of the ACME Packing Company did a brilliant job of compiling the numbers in his breakdown of Parsons' acquisition, but his report can be summarized as the Packers having acquired a Hall of Fame-bound player who has yet to quite reach his athletic prime, who inarguably plays the most important position in the sport. And based on Green Bay's defense thus far, Parsons is worth every penny.
Jerry Jones and Parsons parted badly, but the Cowboys owner seems adamant, at least unspokenly so, in the relative lack of importance that Parsons held for Dallas. But their defense has been laughably bad, and even before his recent arrest, no sane human would have ever pegged a 32-year-old version of the disappointing Jadeveon Clowney as anything but a stopgap.
And with the arrest, warranted or no, Dallas feels like it will never dodge its reputation for causing too much drama for too few tangible results. It even shows on the football field! Because while they escaped New York with a win, Dallas and everyone else that watched the game knew that they didn't win -- the Giants lost. The Cowboys now officially have just one way to win football games, and that is with fireworks and a shootout every week.
And they are slowly learning that they let their best shot at reversing their reputation walk out the door to, most likely, win another team a Super Bowl.