In a summer where the Cowboys’ pass-rush engine is locked in the middle of the franchise’s loudest standoff, Jerry Jones added fuel to the fire when he revealed that Micah Parsons‘s agent told him to ‘stick the contract details up his a–‘. And then a TV voice made one phone call that doused the whole thing with ice water.

Yeah, ESPN analyst Ryan Clark made a phone call to Micah’s agent, David Mulugheta, to understand what went on behind the scenes. And he revealed something we all knew, deep down. “He laughed. He said I’ve never used this phrase in my life. So, for anybody who was reporting that, this never happened. It’s just another way to make this situation even uglier. It’s all lies,” he said. The reported deal was said to be worth $40 million per year, but neither Parsons nor his agent has confirmed or denied it.

And if you’ve really psychoanalysed Jerry’s ways over the last few years, this shouldn’t really come as a surprise to you. This was just his way to shift the tide. He wanted the pressure to fall upon Micah and his agent’s lap. A way to escape all that criticism for still not locking down arguably the best pass rusher in the league.

This isn’t his first rodeo. Just a few weeks ago, Jerry took yet another shot at Parsons. He called him out for being sidelined. “Just because we sign him doesn’t mean we’re gonna have him. He was hurt six games last year. Seriously,” he said. The funny part is, it wasn’t six games; it was four.

And if you thought this was bad enough, his son stepped in, too. “Especially when you’re dealing, in our particular case, internally with guys who are homegrown here, and we feel like they want to be here. I felt like Dak wanted to be here,” he said, questioning Parson’s loyalty.

Every Cowboys fan is having a hard time understanding the front office’s real motive here. Is it to do what’s best for the team, or is it to win a pointless ego-war? If you look at their actions, it’s probably the latter. And if the motive is to look out for the team, they’re doing that job very poorly.

And Micah? He posted a rather cryptic message, which is ironically very easy to make sense of. Yeah, he wants nothing to do with the franchise anymore.

Micah Parsons cuts ties with his cryptic message on X

Parsons stirred the pot without a single word. He wiped Cowboys mentions from his bio, swapped in a “TBD,” and uploaded a profile picture nodding to Micah 7:8 (“Even if I fall, I will rise; the Lord is my light”). That guy sure is dramatic. Call it leverage, call it personal belief, or maybe both. But it came across like a clear line in the sand during his contract standoff.

So where does that leave things? Out in the open and messy. Jones says he’s already floated a massive offer with record-setting guarantees for a defender, even claiming both sides had agreed on years, totals, and guarantees before Parsons’ camp hit pause.

But here’s the sticking point that strengthens Parsons’s hand: Dallas already locked in his fifth-year option for 2025 at $21.324 million guaranteed, and the franchise tag looms after that. A route Jones himself has pointed to when talking about the clock.

And if those record-setting guarantees do not exceed (or even match) what TJ Watt earned in Pittsburgh, there’s really no reason for Parsons to accept. No doubt, Watt’s a beast and earned every penny. But let’s not pretend Micah Parsons is quietly sitting behind him. If anything, he has surpassed Watt’s early-career marks in the stats that matter: more pressure, more takeaways, more snap-to-snap disruption.

Is age a factor here? Well, Watt is 30, and Micah Parsons hasn’t even reached his ceiling yet. So can you fault him for eyeing that contract and thinking, yeah… mine better start there? Which brings us back to Clark’s call: if Mulugheta insists that the blunt remark “never happened,” then a major piece of the Cowboys’ public framing falls apart. In a standoff built on leverage and perception, one on-the-record denial just swung the narrative. And Parsons got the better of it.