Cowboys prepared for what Packers’ Micah Parsons brings, but concerns don’t end with him

FRISCO, Texas — The “Sunday Night Football” matchup of the Dallas Cowboys hosting the Green Bay Packers in Week 4 of the 2025 NFL season was always going to have a bright spotlight.

Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones then made the matchup nuclear by trading All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons to Green Bay a week before the season began in exchange for Pro Bowl defensive tackle Kenny Clark and two first-round picks. Parsons himself called the idea of actually sacking Cowboys Pro Bowl quarterback Dak Prescott “painful” because of the type of friend and mentor Prescott was to him. 

The 32-year-old quarterback simply hopes the experience against Parsons Sunday night doesn’t turn painful for himself. It very well could: Parsons is producing the highest quarterback pressure rate (21.8%) among all edge rushers this season even though he’s been double-teamed at the highest rate (18.4%) among edge rushers, according to NextGenStats via NFL Media. It also doesn’t help Prescott’s cause that both center Cooper Beebe (ankle sprain) and right guard Tyler Booker (ankle sprain) will both miss Sunday’s reunion with Parsons. That’s why Parsons can expect to see a wall of tight ends and running backs chipping him when Prescott drops back to pass. 

“I hope it’s not for me. And I hope he doesn’t get to me for one … Yeah, it’ll be fun. It’ll definitely be fun,” Prescott said Thursday, thinking about facing Parsons in a real game for the first time. “Yeah, me and my fiancée were just talking about the other day and just all the reps of practice, going against Micah in times when he couldn’t hit me. Whether him getting back there, just the trash talk back and forth, me telling him he wouldn’t tackle me anyways, he still can’t bring me down. You got to get to that point. Just getting to go out there and compete with a guy that’s a good friend that I’ve competed with in a number of ways throughout this building and outside of this building. Yeah, just excited to go and have that matchup. But he’s got 5 guys up front, plus tight ends and running backs that he’s got to get through. Then, we’ll worry about if he can get to me.”

However, that’s no guarantee the Cowboys quarterback will remain upright. Opposite Parsons on Green Bay’s defensive line is Pro Bowl edge rusher Rashan Gary. Teaming up with Parsons has been a massive boost for Gary: his 4.5 sacks lead the NFL through the first three weeks of 2025. 

“To me it starts, right, with 52, Gary, a guy that’s been there for a long time and then obviously they got some young interior guys as well, guys they have to feel confident in when you make a trade, getting rid of a guy like Kenny Clark, who to me was their best interior guy,” Prescott said. “Then even [former first-round pick edge rusher Lukas] Van Ness outside, they got a lot of talent. They’re good at what they do. They believe in themselves. But so are we and we’re confident in the scheme that we’re going to put together.” 

The Packers adding Parsons to one of the NFL’s youngest and most explosively athletic defenses in the NFL has powered Green Bay’s unit to leading the NFL in scoring defense (14.7 points per game) and yards per play allowed (3.7). That’s why Cowboys head coach Brian Schottenheimer knows Dallas will have its hands full Sunday night. 

“I think at the end of the day our guys all know Micah. … But guess what, he knows us. … Micah’s a great player. Micah’s going to make plays. I’ll just put that out there. … Does he get a sack? Shit, I hope not, but he might. He’s pretty good,” Schottenheimer said Wednesday. “But I think our guys will go in knowing we got a good plan. It takes more than one guy to block Micah, but let’s not forget Rashan Gary is a hell of a rusher too. This is a defense that’s got incredible speed with [linebacker Edgerrin] Cooper and [linebacker Quay] Walker and Micah and Rashan. … They’re deep and they’re fast. So our ability to have success against the Packers defense will be about a whole lot more than just Micah. Because Micah’s a great player, but just adding Micah to the mix doesn’t negate the fact that they had really good players there before Micah got there.”

It’s going to be tough for some of Parsons’ closest friends from his Cowboys tenure to negate their longstanding friendship with the All-Pro. Dallas Pro Bowl left guard Tyler Smith went over to Parsons’ house in Texas to celebrate the 26-year-old’s record-setting contract extension (four years, $186 million with $136 million guaranteed) with Green Bay. Parsons connected with Smith when he re-signed with Dallas on a four-year, $96 million extension with $81.6 million guaranteed. 

“It’s gonna be different, but I think we both understand it as professionals,” Smith said Thursday. “I have a lot of love for him as a person off the field and things of that nature, even on it, but if we step between the white lines, there can only be one winner. I got a star on my helmet, that’s all that matters to me.”  

That said, it remains a shock that Parsons has a green and gold G on the side of his helmet instead of the star. 

“Definitely not,” Smith said when asked if he ever imagined Parsons’ situation would end up like it did. “I didn’t think things would pan out [this way,] but I guess the league really teaches you that anything can happen.”

Parsons also played a key role in teaching Cowboys 2024 first-round pick left tackle Tyler Guyton the ropes when he entered the NFL. Those two will now go hard in a head-to-head capacity with each other for the first time outside of training camp. 

“He helped me a lot bro. He really did help me a lot,” Guyton said Wednesday. “He’s a great, young pass rusher. Just like DeMarcus Ware and Tyron [Smith] and that whole situation. I looked up to him for guidance. He showed me a lot. We battled and got better from it.”

So will Dallas draw on their institutional knowledge of Parsons to game plan for him or purely evaluate him on three games of 2025 Packers tape? 

“That’s a good question. No. Knowing Micah keeps you up even more at night because I’ve seen him do things I haven’t seen him do yet in Green Bay. It means it’s in there. I know he has it. I know he has the tools,” Schottenheimer said. “But like I said, I can’t wait to see Micah. I really, really can’t. Really, he was a huge part of this organization and it’ll just be great to see him before the game kicks off. And hopefully after the game.”

Cowboys Pro Bowl tight end Jake Ferguson was one of the players responsible for helping chip parsons in practice settings, which gives him some sense of comfort entering his first matchup of having to try to help contain the All-Pro in a real game. 

“I’ve been doing it for four years now [in practice], so I kind of have a sense of how he plays. Yeah, it’s going to be fun,” Ferguson said on Wednesday. “I like to think that I know some of his tendencies: how he plays, what he likes to do. Watching the film the last two days, just getting a better sense with the defense and how he plugs into that defense.” 

Will Sunday night end the seemingly never-ending discussion around the Cowboys’ shocking decision to trade Parsons away at 26-years-old, in the prime of his career? Prescott, a veteran of multiple Dallas contract negotiation cycles, doesn’t think so. 

“I doubt it will be the closure. I doubt you’ll be done with that,” Prescott said. “Some way, somehow it will get brought up again. Who knows? So excited to play him, excited to play this week. As I said, I think it’ll be a fun banter back and forth with a hell of a competitor.”