It may be his years of negotiation in the oil business or it might be the innate self-confidence with which he carries himself as owner/CEO/GM of the Dallas Cowboys, but Jerry Jones appears unruffled by Micah Parsons shock trade request.

It’s not that Jones appeared laissez-faire about the biggest talking point to hit the NFL these past few weeks that teams have been back in training camp, but his laid-back response to the issue would have taken many by surprise as he potentially faces losing the most influential player on the Cowboys roster.

From insisting that he wanted to be nothing more than a ‘Cowboy for life’ at the start of camp, Parsons pulled a complete U-turn heading into week two, claiming that ‘I no longer want to be held to closed-door negotiations without my agent present. I no longer want shots taken at me for getting injured while laying it on the line for the organisation, our fans and my team-mates. I no longer want narratives created and spread to the media about me’.

While NFL media immediately set about postulating on potential landing spots for the pass rusher, however, Jones — and new head coach Brian Scottenheimer — remained calm in their response, with the owner insisting that Parsons’ demand was all part of the negotiation process. Indeed, he may be right, for the same tactic worked for Myles Garrett in Cleveland, where the league’s premier pass rusher demanded a trade only to be reeled back in with the biggest non-QB contract in NFL history. Parsons has claimed repeatedly that he has no desire to reset the market in the way Garrett and, latterly, T.J. Watt have done, but is clearly ticked off by the way he feels the whole contract extension issue has been handled in Dallas.

“Don’t lose any sleep over it — that’s one thing I would say to our fans: don’t lose any sleep,” Jones stressed to the media at the end of practice. “This is a negotiation. Does it blow me up? Somebody saying, ‘Look, trade me’? No, that’s just not a flare sign for me at all in any way.

“I know my attitude, and mine is the same one that I’ve [always] had. I love Micah. I think he is an outstanding player, and he can really help us, but he’s gotta fit in with what’s in the best interest of the team — and that’s what a negotiation is all about. As always, in any relationship, there’s different moods and different times, and that’s what this is.”

As things stand, without an extension, Parsons is due a fully guaranteed $24m via the fifth-year option that comes with being a first-round draft pick but, despite him reporting to camp, it is unclear how hard a game of hardball he intends to play with the front office.

“I would hope [he’d still attend practice],” Schottenheimer told the same media assembly. “I expect to see him out there today and we’ll see about that, but the conversation that he and I have had — and we talk about a lot of different things — is all very positive.”

The head coach, appointed at the start of the year as replacement for Mike McCarthy, also insisted that the Parsons situation is not a distraction for the rest of the roster.

“It’s going to be talked about. There’s always going to be things that are hot topics amongst the masses, but our guys have a very singular focus and that’s getting better and getting ready to have a hell of a practice today. They are focused on what we’re trying to build on the field and in the meeting rooms. As we get closer to a game week, there’s plenty of things for us to focus on.”


Jones and the Cowboys are hardly strangers to contract controversy, and the owner has made a habit of dragging things out to the point where players either hold out or leave, or the club ends up paying over the odds to keep them. His protracted ‘negotiations’ with Dak Prescott were only resolved, at great expense, at the 11^th hour, while Emmitt Smith chose to sit out the first two games of the 1993 campaign as talks reached an impasse, before the 0-2 Cowboys capitulated and made him the highest-paid running back in the entire league. If the Parsons situation is to be resolved in the team’s favour, it is likely to be on similar terms — but Jones continues to cut a confident figure.

“I wouldn’t even be standing here with you if I didn’t think we potentially have a great future with Micah,” he insisted. “We’re in good shape. This is a negotiation.”