The NFL thrives on hype. There’s no shortage of “BREAKING” news that doesn’t necessarily live up to the tag on social media. But on Thursday we saw the rare trade where superlatives fall short in describing just how monumental and landscape-altering the deal will be. The Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys — two of the league’s most storied franchises — agreed to a trade that sent DE Micah Parsons — one of the best players in the sport — from Dallas to Green Bay. 

This might be one of the most impactful trades in a generation. The ripple effects from this deal are more like tidal waves and will be felt for years and years to come. It’s not hyperbole to say that this deal could define the legacies for a plethora of people involved, everyone from Parsons to staff and players in both Green Bay and Dallas, even to swashbuckling Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. 

I won’t keep you in suspense. The Packers get an A and the Cowboys get an F for this trade, which felt lopsided from the jump and doesn’t get any better the more you dig in. But the reasons for both grades can tell a lot about where these two organizations might be headed from here. 

Trade Details & Background

In exchange for Parsons, the Packers gave the Cowboys their next two first-round picks as well as veteran DT Kenny Clark. Nothing in the future is guaranteed, but the Packers obviously expect those picks to be in the 20s or later given the addition of Parsons plus the presence of QB Jordan Love, who the team signed to a $55 million contract just a year ago. Clark is under contract for up to $3 million this year and up to $41.5 million over the next two seasons, though nothing past this year is guaranteed. 

Green Bay also signed Parsons to a record four-year, $188 million deal with $136 million in guarantees. It’s an amazingly player-friendly contract on many levels. At $47 million a year, it blows past Browns DE Myles Garrett, Steelers OLB T.J. Watt and Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase who had set the bar for elite non-quarterbacks at around $40-$41 million a year. Parsons will get $62 million in the first year of the deal and $120 million in full guarantees. 

It’s dramatically more than the five-year, $202 million deal Jones says he negotiated directly with Parsons back in April. Jones took issue with Parsons involving his agent after that and talks never picked back up. It led to an increasingly acrimonious relationship with the two sides taking digs at each other publicly while Parsons held in during training camp and did not practice. 

In hindsight, it’s clear both sides were speeding toward a divorce, but right until it happened, people all across the league found it hard to believe the Cowboys would part with such an impactful player. After all, Jones is infamous for dragging out talks to the last minute before ponying up the dough, and eight times out of ten a trade request is a negotiating tactic to get an extension from a player’s current team. We’ve seen it a few times already this year with Commanders WR Terry McLaurin, Bengals DE Trey Hendrickson and others. 

This time however, there was a divide that the Cowboys couldn’t — or rather wouldn’t — breach. 

Packers grade: A

Parsons is incredible. Full stop. Since he’s entered the league, he’s been a fixture in our NFLTR Top 100 Players list and has probably been no worse than the third-best pass rusher in football in that time. He has 52.5 sacks in his first four seasons, including 12 in 13 games last year, which ranks sixth all-time for a player’s first four seasons. Sacks sell his snap-to-snap impact short, too. Parsons ranks first in the NFL in pass rush win rate since being drafted, and has added a bunch of other splash plays including nine forced fumbles and a fumble six. 

It’s not outrageous at all to say that Parsons is on track for the Hall of Fame at his current pace. There’s not really a one-to-one precedent for trading a player like this. The closest analog was when the Raiders dealt DE Khalil Mack to the Bears rather than meet his asking price, which happened right before the season too. Mack did have a DPOY award under his belt at that point, but was a year older and not the same caliber of pass rusher. Mack hasn’t had a season with more than 30 quarterback hits in his career, Parsons has done it twice in his first four seasons. 

For the Packers to get a player like Parsons while paying a lower price than the Mack trade is a massive, massive win. Green Bay has a reputation for being involved in trade talks but rarely actually following through on making splashy transactions, often to the chagrin of the fanbase. The opportunity to add a player like Parsons was too good to pass up, however, and it says a lot about the player that the Packers were willing to go to the lengths they did to land him. 

(It also might say something about GM Brian Gutekunst and HC Matt LaFleur and any possible heat they might be feeling from new president Ed Policy, who did not extend their contracts this offseason).

Adding Parsons to a defense that was fourth in the league in EPA per play, fifth in total defense and sixth in scoring is the type of move that has the potential to supercharge Green Bay’s outlook, both on that side of the ball and for where they could end up at the end of the year. Parsons will make the job for everyone else on defense vastly easier. The secondary will have to cover for less time and will have more chances at potential turnovers due to the disruption Parsons creates. Other players up front like DE Rashan Gary, DT Devonte Wyatt and more will have easier matchups they should be able to take advantage of and create even more pressure. 

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this trade elevates the Packers from a playoff threat with a floor lower than people might have expected to a top-line NFC contender. 

On the other side of the coin, the Packers did give up a lot. Not only was two first-round picks a heavy price, but the Packers shattered precedents with the contract beyond just blowing past the market for top-level non-quarterbacks. Green Bay traditionally does not guarantee money past the first year with rare exceptions, usually for quarterbacks. They made a concession for Parsons. 

The team is financially a lot more top-heavy with the Parsons contract going on the books along with Love. In average annual salary, the two alone account for $102 million of the $279.2 million salary cap. Looking at it like that is too reductive and the Packers will still be able to pay plenty of other players and field a team around those two, but there is going to be some unavoidable fallout with players departing in the next 12 months. 

Some of that has already started with the departure of Clark in the trade, who spent the past nine seasons in Green Bay after being drafted in the first round out of UCLA. He was a great player for a long time and was perpetually underrated, with the versatility to both hold up at nose tackle while also creating legitimate disruption against the pass (he had 7.5 sacks in 2023 and has 35 in his career). Losing Clark is not inconsequential for the Packers but it’s also not insurmountable by any means. The veteran turns 30 in October and took a noticeable step backward last season. Defensive tackle is one of the deepest spots on the team, so there’s a great chance the Packers don’t skip too much of a beat. 

All in all, the Packers certainly gave up a lot. Any time a team makes an investment like this, there’s inherent risk in tying up so much into one player in a sport where the attrition rate is so high. But for a player like Parsons, there’s no question it’s worth it. 

Cowboys grade: F

For as great of a deal as this is for the Packers, it’s equally disastrous for the Cowboys. The Cowboys got less for Parsons than the Raiders got for Mack — the closest comparable situation. They got less for Parsons than what the Jets got from the Seahawks for S Jamal Adams, which was two firsts and a third. 

There’s even a credible case this deal is worse for the Cowboys than the parallel package the Dallas Mavericks accepted in the infamous Luka Doncic trade. 

Of course, owner Jerry Jones doesn’t see it that way, and he defended his decision for the better part of an hour Thursday night. Jones’ core rationale boils down to a belief the Cowboys are better off with the sum of the pieces they acquired, both now and in the long run, than they would have been if they had signed Parsons to the contract he got from Green Bay. He predictably cited the Herschel Walker trade, the genesis of Jones’ success in the 1990s when Dallas last won a Super Bowl. 

But Jones’ flimsy reasoning falls apart at the slightest inspection. Let’s start with the comparison to the Walker trade. There were a ton of moving pieces in that deal, but essentially the Cowboys gave up Walker and four draft picks and got back five players plus eight picks — including three firsts, three seconds and a third. It was a different era when teams valued running backs far higher and were far less meticulous about asset management, so there was never a chance for Jones to come close to replicating that trade. 

But it’s a crime that he didn’t even exceed the precedent set by the other trades listed above, one that could set the Cowboys franchise back years. When we looked at potential trade destinations for Parsons just a few weeks ago, our estimation was that it would take three first-round picks to get Dallas to part with the star pass rusher, or equivalent value with other lower picks and players. This was assuming that the Cowboys would even be willing to trade Parsons at all, which seemed far-fetched. 

Jones insisted repeatedly on Thursday night he was happy with the return. At 82 years old, his media appearances are meandering and hard to follow sometimes. He kept talking about the idea of getting three to five quality players to replace Parsons, either factoring in the possibility of trading down with the two first-rounders they acquired or lumping them in with the two Dallas was already slotted for, a clear fallacy I won’t harp on. The octogenarian owner/GM/marketer-in-chief also touted the acquisition of a Pro Bowl defensive tackle to shore up a spot on the roster that’s been a pain point for a few years now.

Clark looms large in the deal for Jones, and he’s a solid player who will make the Cowboys better. However, the Packers were willing to move on in part because he seems to be a declining player. There’s a pretty solid chance Dallas cuts Clark next offseason when his salary balloons over $20 million, particularly if they’re trying to rebuild. Clark’s trade value in a vacuum was probably somewhere in the range of a fifth-round pick, maybe a fourth given Green Bay had already paid the bulk of his salary this year. 

That makes the total value of the trade package Dallas got two firsts and a fourth — coincidentally equal to what the Jaguars got for trading CB Jalen Ramsey to the Rams back in 2020. That deal serves as a reminder of how poorly this could go for the Cowboys. The Rams won a Super Bowl thanks in large part to Ramsey’s contributions, while the Jaguars turned those picks into OLB K’Lavon Chaisson, RB Travis Etienne, OLB Jordan Smith and WR Jalen Camp. 

Preoccupied with fixing the run defense, Jones hand-waved the loss of one of the best pass rushers in football by saying the coaching staff could scheme up ways to pressure opposing quarterbacks more easily than they could scheme up better run defense. There may be more room for defensive coordinators to get creative with blitzes but the core of that sentiment doesn’t pass the sniff test. Run defense is a much easier skill to find and teach than high-end pass rushing, and the way the NFL spends cash and draft picks supports that. 

The best point Jones made in his defense of the trade was his concern about the Cowboys’ roster becoming too top-heavy with a deal for Parsons added on top of massive contracts for QB Dak Prescott and WR CeeDee Lamb. With Prescott at $60 million a year and Lamb at $34 million a year, $40-plus million annually for Parsons would have been taxing (not impossible, which is a key difference). In theory, turning Parsons into a multitude of other starters and contributors makes sense from an asset management perspective. 

But not only is that not what Jones did by failing to maximize the trade return for Parsons, it’s a dichotomy he maneuvered himself into unnecessarily by how he’s handled these major contract negotiations. 

Parsons was eligible for a new contract last summer and expressed interest in getting a deal done early, one that probably would have been for less than $40 million annually given the market at the time. 49ers DE Nick Bosa paced all defensive players at $34 million a year, Vikings WR Justin Jefferson beat him for non-quarterbacks at $35 million a year and Jones later caved and gave Lamb $34 million a year. Even a $37 million per year deal could have dramatically reset the market and still been a massive discount on what Parsons ultimately received. Instead, Jones waited, the price went up, and the seeds of resentment with Parsons were planted. 

Had Jones been more proactive, dating back to the first time Prescott was eligible for an extension in 2019, he could have both saved money on these contracts and given Dallas more cap flexibility to operate going forward. Instead, he’s dragged his feet on nearly every single major negotiation over the last decade and it’s cost the Cowboys dearly — not just money now that Parsons is gone. It’s a major self-inflicted wound, one that Jones has never really explained satisfactorily. Combined with the other self-inflicted wound, the end-around Jones attempted to run around Parsons’ agent that got blown up for a loss of 20 in the backfield, and Jones has become a pretty significant drag on the football operations in recent years. 

This trade isn’t independent of all of Jones’ other mis-steps and foibles but it has the potential to overshadow all of them in the years to come. It also has the potential to overshadow the other features of his legacy, especially if this sinks the Cowboys even further into the morass they’ve been unable to pull out of for the past few decades. 

Jones was daring and innovative when he bought the team and helped build a dynasty in the 1990s, cementing a place in NFL history and turning the Cowboys into “America’s Team.” But it’s been a long time since the Cowboys were relevant in that same way. These days, Jones feels more tottering and out of touch, and this trade does nothing to dispel that perception.