After months of back-and-forth reports about Micah Parsons’ upcoming contract extension, we’ve finally got the first concrete update: there have been zero meetings between the player’s agent and the team’s front office. And Parsons has reached his wits’ end, officially requesting a trade this week.
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This has led to a lot of well-deserved backlash for Dallas Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones, who has made a mess of contract negotiations in the Big D for years. And yet, former Patriot and current podcaster Julian Edelman says he’d still rather negotiate with Jones than the guy he had to haggle with for his NFL contracts in Foxborough.
That guy would be Bill Belichick. From Edelman’s perspective, Jones would be better to negotiate with because he eventually relents and pays his guys, while Edelman claims Belichick simply lets his players walk.
“Jerry pays his guys. Bill would just get rid of ya,” Edelman jokingly said. “So I would rather go with Jerry. [The negotiation will] be longer, but Jerry’s gonna pay ya! Dak Prescott tore his ACL. Paid him, made him the highest-paid player. CeeDee Lamb, the highest-paid receiver. [Tight end Jake] Ferguson just got paid.”
It’s certainly a strange tack to take for Edelman, a guy who successfully negotiated five contracts with Belichick and the Patriots’ front office during his 13-year NFL career, all of which were spent with the Patriots. Belichick also had at least 15 players play 8+ straight seasons for him during his tenure in New England, so he didn’t quite have the revolving door policy Edelman is talking about.
The other strange part about Edelman’s quote is that he brought up the Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb deals as positive examples of Jones’ negotiating. Sure, they both got massive deals at the end of the line, but the process of getting there was far longer, more arduous, frustrating, and stressful than it needed to be.
The protracted negotiations also cost the Cowboys many extra millions they could use right now as they negotiate what will likely be the biggest non-QB contract in NFL history for Parsons. Even when Edelman’s co-host, Rob Gronkowski, tried to simply put pressure on Jones to get the deal done, Edelman continued his odd pro-Jerry Jones diatribe. “Pay Micah! Pay him!” he exclaimed.
“I bet Jerry’s got some like, Jedi Mind Tricks, where he probably wants him to be the highest-paid guy,” Edelman responded.
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Edelman is crediting a guy who has forcefully maintained control over a franchise that has been rotting from the inside for the last three decades with having the ability to employ “Jedi Mind Tricks”, simply because what the 82-year-old owner is doing is so nonsensical that it’s all he could come up with to explain it away.
If even half of what Parsons said in his post announcing his trade request is true, then it’s clear Jerry Jones is losing his grip on the team and, arguably, reality. He tried to trick Parsons into agreeing to a deal without his agent present, and didn’t meet with said players’ representatives throughout this entire seven-month offseason.
Jones doesn’t need more praise from guys like Julian Edelman right now. He needs a reality check. Hopefully, Micah Parsons’ forceful and detailed message can do that for him.
