King Kong, Godzilla and Versatility of Packers’ Micah Parsons

“Best on best is always good – and it’s always good for the fans because y’all like to see the King Kong-Godzilla matchups and those is great – but, at the end, sometimes you like to see the pups too, see if they can come off the porch. We want to attack them and get ways to create ways to win to get after the quarterback.”

From an offensive play-caller perspective, Packers coach Matt LaFleur saw another challenge in moving Parsons’ around the defense. 

“If you know somebody’s always going to line up on the right side at defensive end, well, we can do things to try and eliminate them as much as possible, whether it’s always putting a tight end or a receiver or a back or somebody there to chip them on the way out, or always sliding your protection that way,” LaFleur said. “It gets more challenging when you start moving people around and now we’ve got to ID and find them.”

Few people know Parsons better than Commanders coach Dan Quinn. Quinn was the Cowboys’ defensive coordinator in 2021, when Parsons was drafted as an off-the-ball linebacker and was first-team All-Pro and NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year.

In their three years together, Dallas finished in the top seven in points allowed each season. Parsons was first- or second-team All-Pro all three seasons. 

“Like Micah and other great players, you want to know where they are,” Quinn said this week. “and if you have a vulnerability in a spot, you want to make sure you can fortify that to a strength. So, you don’t just leave it to chance and see what happens. You want to make sure there’s a plan to go into it.

“And so, for teams like Green Bay, they’ve got a number of good players and that makes it more challenging when this one and this one and that one over there. When there’s just one player to stop, ‘OK, this is what we want to do,’ that’s easier than when there’s multiple people in different locations. So, in my experience, the best of the best teams have had a number of players that were high-level hitters and now this one gets too much attention. You leave this one open, he’s going to shoot the three and make you pay.”

The longer Parsons is with the Packers, the more he’ll be unleashed by Hafley. Even with limited practice time, limited conditioning and limited mastery of the playbook, Parsons was superb against Detroit.

Of 65 edge rushers who played at least 20 pass-rushing snaps, Parsons exited Week 1 ranked 10th in PFF’s pass-rush win rate.

“I think we have to continue to figure out how to win games and figure out our matchups,” Hafley said. “If we feel like we have a mismatch or we feel like there’s something in protection that we want to kind of exploit, then that’s our job to do that. Like I’ve always said, just because he’s a D-end, I’m not going to put him at D-end and go. That’s our job to help him and help our team.”