The Dallas Cowboys traded away former Penn State defensive lineman Micah Parsons before the start of the 2025 NFL regular season.
It was a move that immediately raised red flags, questions, and everything in between in terms of what Dallas was going to do without the best defensive end in the league on its team. As Week 10 ramps up, those concerns have not disappeared. With the latest trades that came in on Tuesday before the NFL trade deadline hit at 4 p.m. ET, the Cowboys clearly are still trying to patch up their mistake that could've been avoided with contract negotiation clarity back in March.
Dallas received two first-round picks (2026 and 2027) and defensive lineman Kenny Clark to send Parsons to Green Bay. On Tuesday, the Cowboys made two trades that proved the defensive struggles in their 3-5-1 season must be fixed immediately.
The New York Jets traded away defensive tackle Quinnen Williams for a 2026 second-round pick and the higher of Dallas' two 2027 first-round picks. The Cowboys also added linebacker Logan Wilson to their roster from the Cincinnati Bengals, giving his former team a seventh-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.
One of Dallas' 2027 first-round selections is courtesy of the Parsons trade, and having the salary cap space to sign new guys to the roster on defense is another plus to the trade done back in August.
With all the trade deadline chaos ensuing in Dallas, it brings up a reminder that if owner and general manager Jerry Jones kept Parsons, these defensive moves would not be as in high-demand as they are.
The Cowboys are desperate for help on that side of the ball while Green Bay is sitting very pretty with the NFL's fifth-best run defense in 2025. On the surface, everything Jones has to work with from the Parsons trade makes it justifiable. Going deeper, though, keeping Parsons was the most secure thing Jones could have done for his defense.
Now, he's trying to forces pieces of a puzzle together and find answers when he threw the solution out the window and gave it to the Packers. Parsons was the most valuable part of Dallas' defense from 2021-24, and the team has yet to find a suitable replacement. He's on a different level of defensive talent that is hard to come by. The former Nittany Lion is a difference maker on the field, a game-changing player. The Cowboys let him go and are paying the price for it.