The Cowboys are way better at coming up with reasons for not timely and properly paying their key players than they are at timely and properly paying their key players.
Amid training-camp chants from fans to pay linebacker Micah Parsons, Cowboys executive Stephen Jones said this, via Clarence E. Hill, Jr. of All City DLLS, “We want to pay Micah too. He’s got to want to be paid.”
Obviously, he wants to be paid. Jones is saying that, at some point, he needs to accept our offer.
The comment underscores my prediction that, before Week 1, they’ll offer him something significantly less than they would have offered if he had held out. He’ll then have to decide whether to take it now, or to try to get more later.
If he doesn’t, the Cowboys will happily pay him $24 million this year and kick the can to next year, when they’d likely apply the exclusive franchise tag and once again drag their feet until they have painted themselves squarely into a corner, forcing themselves to pay more than they would have paid if they’d done it sooner.
The hidden, and perhaps unintended, genius in the approach is this. Before they break the pay, they will have gotten two seasons out of him at a total of $27 million. Which is, given Parsons’s skills and abilities, one hell of a bargain for the Cowboys.