From @ToddBrock24f7: Parsons had some harsh words when asked about his head coach’s future with the team, but his answer was more about his veteran teammates.
Though there have been more lopsided final scores through the years, the Cowboys’ humiliating 34-6 loss on Sunday ranks as one of the most thorough and demoralizing defeats in the franchise’s history.
Emotions within Cowboys Nation are raw. The same goes for inside the locker room, too, where coaches and players can expect another difficult week of doom-and-gloom queries about the current state of the team amid a 3-6 season that shows no sign whatsoever of improving.
The more outspoken members of the organization will no doubt have things to say, and in a year when so much has not gone as planned, many of the comments and remarks to come out of Dallas over the coming days and weeks will also land in ways that no one saw coming.
Micah Parsons has already kicked off the headline-making soundbite frenzy with his reply to a question about his head coach’s future with the team.
Longtime Cowboys writer Jori Epstein of Yahoo Sports asked the edge rusher about the feeling inside the locker room regarding whether Mike McCarthy- on the final year of his contract- will return to the role in 2025.
“That’s above my pay grade about if Mike is coaching again next year,” Parsons prefaced. But what he went on to say next will stir up all kinds of chatter with the team’s media, fans, and outside observers.
“All coaching aside, Mike can leave and go wherever he wants, but guys I kind of feel bad for is guys like Zack Martin and guys who might be on their last year, on their way out, because that’s who I want to go hold the trophy for. You want to win games and do great things with those type of legends who put in more time and work than Mike McCarthy ever did. Those are the kind of guys that I have so much sympathy and hurt for.”
There are two primary ways the outspoken 25-year-old’s comments are being interpreted by a fanbase helplessly watching their season roll off the edge of a cliff in dramatic slow-motion.
Reading No. 1 focuses on the two times Parsons references his coach by name. This translation seems to almost assume that McCarthy will be somewhere else next season and that Parsons won’t lose much sleep over it, because he doesn’t feel the coach has put in the same kind of investment that Parsons and some of his his teammates have.
Reading No. 2 suggests that Parsons is really zeroing in on the team’s veteran players, like Martin. He views the wasted 2024 season as an unfortunate way to end either a long Cowboys stint or a star-studded pro career and feels like he and his younger teammates are letting down their mentors who deserve one last chance at a ring.
There’s truth to both interpretations.
The hot-take sports-talk shows will hammer home “McCarthy can leave” as a shouting point and turn Parsons’s reference to how little “time and work” the coach supposedly devoted into some sort of out-loud coded admission that McCarthy has lost the locker room.
But Parsons is correct on everything he said, even if the tone and context were unnecessarily harsh toward his head coach.
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The frustrating reality is that the window is closing for seasoned Cowboys players like Martin (or DeMarcus Lawrence or Dak Prescott or Ezekiel Elliott or Jourdan Lewis). And while there will be Pro Bowl honors and All-Pro nods and individual statistics and personal accolades to carry them into their post-gridiron lives, there may not be more than a smattering of playoff-game appearances, and no postseason success whatsoever past the divisional round.
Parsons can likely already see himself in their stories: great players sacrificing themselves daily but stuck on teams that could never get themselves collectively over the hump to true football glory.
Ten years of weight rooms and trainer’s tables; giving blood, sweat, and tears to the game. A decade of destroying their bodies in exchange for temporary hero status, and then it’s all over. Maybe the lucky select few get a radio or TV gig to give the token ex-player’s perspective.
For a coach, however, even if it ends disastrously, there’s usually a different-colored cap to put on and another clipboard to hold next season.
To a competitor like Parsons, that has to be beyond maddening. And when he’s asked about it in the moments after another embarrassing no-show by the entire roster, what’s going to come out won’t be the typical, politically-correct, boring, safe, vanilla, cliched answers to a reporter’s question.
But now, whether he meant to or not, Parsons has thrown McCarthy right out into traffic. Both will be asked about the comments this week. McCarthy will likely brush it off. Other Cowboys players will be asked about it, too. So will Jerry Jones.
Parsons has already clapped back, posting Monday on social media:
“Loll damn yeah ima just eat the fine for now on! Because the way yall twist words and flip them around for content is nasty work!”
He’ll no doubt have even more to say on the subject in this week’s episode of his podcast.
And a season already going up in flames will produce a new hotspot off to the side that will get everyone’s attention, at least until next Monday night’s meeting with Houston, when Parsons, McCarthy, and the Cowboys will get their next opportunity to alter the 2024 narrative before a nationwide primetime audience.
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