Micah Parsons made some changes to his personal routine during the Cowboys’ bye week, like coming into work earlier to get a head start on his own game prep.
“I just felt like I’ve got to do more,” he said.
He certainly did more on Sunday… but maybe because he was doing less.
The rookie linebacker was named NFC Defensive Player of the Week for his dominant performance in the Cowboys’ 20-16 win over the Vikings: ten tackles, an assist on another, a quarterback hit, four tackles for loss.
As per the team website, Parsons is the first rookie in NFL history to log double-digit tackles in a game and have four of them occur behind the line of scrimmage.
He was given the game ball for his efforts, a souvenir he carried with him all the way to the podium during his postgame remarks to reporters.
“I just felt like this is one of my better games I’ve played,” Parsons said after the victory. “Like I said during the week, when things aren’t going right, you’ve got to prepare different. So I think this week, I came in with the mindset like, ‘Sunday night, I’ve got to be the It Factor.’ It’s kind of what I expected, what I wanted to do today.”
There is obviously more to it than just setting an earlier alarm in the morning, but defensive coordinator Dan Quinn definitely noticed a renewed focus and energy from the 22-year-old in the week leading up to game time.
“I did see that, in fact,” Quinn said of Parsons’s mental shift. “I get in pretty early. I turn around and I saw him walking in next to me. So I said, ‘Okay, what have we got going on here?’ And he said, ‘I’m doing something. I’m changing some things.’ I said, ‘I love it, man.'”
.@MicahhParsons11 is just getting started 😎#DallasCowboys pic.twitter.com/7xqQ5zpvwo
— Dallas Cowboys (@dallascowboys) November 3, 2021
The first-round draft pick has packed a lot into his first seven games at the pro level. After starting Week 1 at linebacker, the rookie moved to defensive end for his second and third outings to cover for missing teammates. He’s been asked to do a lot as a rookie, and he’s answered every call from the Dallas coaching staff.
In Week 8, though, they actually asked him to do just a little bit less.
Jayron Kearse wore the defensive playcaller’s “green dot” in Minnesota instead of Parsons. With the journeyman safety acting as the primary communicator in the huddle, Parsons was able to simplify his pre-snap routine in a way he previously couldn’t.
“What this did was let Micah Parsons be free, let Micah Parsons not think,” noted ex-NFL safety Ryan Clark on ESPN. “This is the best he’s played from the inside linebacker position. Micah Parsons got to bring this thing back to park ball. Run. And hit.”
Maybe it’s the green dot. Maybe it’s the earlier wake-up call. Maybe it’s an extra push that came from some self-scouting sessions. Parsons believes it’s all of the above.
“I would say it’s everything,” Parsons said. “It wouldn’t be just one particular thing. It’s everything we do: how you prepare, what you watch, how you practice, what time you come in, how you recover during the week. I think everything let me play how I usually play today.”
It is indeed a process. And by stripping the whole thing down and building it back more thoughtfully, Parsons and the coaching staff may have taken a leading candidate for Defensive Rookie of the Year… and made him even better for the Cowboys’ run to the playoffs.
“When you’re trying to improve,” Quinn explained, “one of the best things you need to learn how to do is put a process together; what is that step-by-step going to look like? It’s not just, ‘Hey, I’m going to wake up earlier.’ It’s: to do what when you get here? What are the processes? I knew when he got to the game, when you just feel that ready. I said, ‘Where did that come from?’ It was from the week. I said, ‘It was no surprise that you’re going to play well,’ and he certainly did.”
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