It was the biggest move of the offseason across the NFL: the Dallas Cowboys trading edge rusher Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers.
The blockbuster trade came less than week before the start of the regular season. It also could’ve gone differently as Parsons may have called the Big Apple home instead of Titletown.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones confirmed on ESPN New York that he’d reached out to the New York Jets about a deal for Parsons.
‘I had initiated that with one of the [New York NFL] teams and you can guess that it was not the Giants,’ Jones said with a laugh.
He detailed that Jets officials responded and they ‘did not have the resources’ to get a deal done for Parsons. Dallas got two future first-round NFL draft picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark from the Packers in the deal for Parsons.
‘I would imagine somewhere in that conversation you might’ve asked for Quinnen Williams since you were really looking to help your run defense,’ ESPN New York host Gary Myers said. ‘Maybe a [first-round pick], maybe two [first-round picks] and Quinnen Williams. Quinnen Williams is a better player than Kenny Clark in my opinion but am I going down the right path there?’
‘Yes, yes you are,’ Jones said. ‘A prerequisite to the entire trade is that we had to have right now a really, frankly, significant, dominant inside defensive player which was our goal to address the run… we wanted to bolster up there. We tried to do it with Mazi Smith when we drafted him two years earlier but that was prerequisite.’
Jones confirmed that was his price for the Jets in a Parsons deal and they did not want to meet that price. Once they said no, that was the end of talks.
Green Bay has won its first two games of the season with Parsons on the defense. The four-time Pro Bowler has 1.5 sacks and four quarterback hits in those two games despite playing just 57% of the snaps on defense.