Football
The Dallas Cowboys are going to practice football today. Work will officially commence in Oxnard, California during the first session of training camp, but it will occur about 24 hours after the team’s brain-trust took the podium for their annual state of the union address. During that press conference, Jerry Jones and Stephen Jones did little to cool the flames of the fire burning around Cowboys star pass rusher Micah Parsons needing a contract extension.
To be clear, Parsons does not appear to be holding out, but he may wind up holding in (being present but not practicing so as to avoid injury during negotiations). As Brian Schottenheimer was discussing this during the presser on Monday, Jerry Jones interjected to note that Parsons missed six games (it was actually four) last year due to injury. The implication (the perceived one at least) was that players cannot necessarily be counted on due to injury. NFL people, analysts and others were discussing this online and Parsons reposted a comment from J.J. Watt that discussed how this was poor leadership from Jerry.
That’s the background to understand what’s next. As national shows were off and running with the story at large on Tuesday morning, ESPN’s Adam Schefter noted that the Cowboys have yet to make a contractual offer to Parsons.
“This is a conversation that, apparently, could linger on through the summer because they’re nowhere in the negotiation game. And this is a familiar script for the Dallas Cowboys.”
Parsons first became eligible for an extension last offseason. That the situation has reached this point is already an issue that didn’t need to be, but to not have even offered a deal yet suggests that this really is going to go on for quite some time.
The Cowboys have played this game very recently in the past and have a batting average of about .000 when doing so. They lost (as far as the financial wins and losses are concerned) the showdowns they got into with Dak Prescott (both times), CeeDee Lamb and once upon a time DeMarcus Lawrence. Micah Parsons is surely going to emerge victorious (again, in the defined terms) in the same way.
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