For the second week in a row, Cowboys fans held their breath as they watched the most dominant player on the team (and maybe the entire league) limp around very gingerly on the field between plays.
Last Sunday versus Washington, it appeared to be a lower back muscle that was troubling Micah Parsons. Afterward, he brushed off that tweak as no big deal. “It’s just football,” he told reporters.
In Week 5 against the defending Super Bowl champion Rams, the situation was far more concerning. Parsons was noticeably hobbling, holding his inner thigh, even riding a stationary bike on the Cowboys sideline at times he should have been in the huddle.
But the second-year phenom said following the team’s impressive 22-10 win that succumbing to the groin strain and calling it quits for the day never really entered his mind.
“No. Not at all.”
In fact, Parsons did more damage to the Los Angeles game plan after the first-quarter injury. A critical quarterback pressure to disrupt a third-down try, two sacks of Matthew Stafford, and a forced fumble that thwarted the Rams’ last-gasp comeback effort all came in the second half, well after he suffered the injury and even sat out a few plays trying to do whatever he could to work out the kinks.
“Just tape my leg up, make sure I just kept it in place, things like that,” Parsons explained. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to get out there on that field.”
Cowboys LB Micah Parsons said his left groin injury occurred late in first quarter. Kept playing, recorded his third two-sack game of season. Senior defensive assistant George Edwards checked on Parsons to make sure he could go. "I said, 'George, as long as I'm alive, I can go.'"
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) October 10, 2022
He was limited, but even so, Parsons was still the best defender on the field.
“I told Coach, ‘I can’t do a whole lot of running, but I can rush,'” he told the Fox crew in his postgame interview. “I just did what I could.”
It turned out to be plenty on Sunday.
“The kid’s a beast, bro,” Cowboys defensive tackle Trysten Hill said of Parsons per the Dallas Morning News. “I don’t know what else to say. He does that off a bad groin. I mean, two sacks, a sack-fumble? You can’t draw it up any better than that, really.”
After the game, Parsons once again dismissed his injury, even though it left him barely able to walk in between snaps.
“When you think about the circumstances of the game, the team needed me. You just got to fight through some things,” he explained.
“As long as I’m out there, I know I can make something happen; good things can happen. I take a lot of pride in pushing through a lot.”
It was Parsons’s third game this season with multiple sacks. With six total, he leads the entire Dallas defense in the category and is in a three-way tie atop the league leaderboard heading into Monday night.
His groin will be of great interest this coming week, with the very mobile Jalen Hurts and the undefeated Eagles next on the Cowboys’ schedule.
But apparently Parsons will keep pushing. And as long as he does, good things will likely keep happening.
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