Micah Parsons may be wearing a Green Bay Packers uniform now, but he’s not sounding like a guy ready to bury the Dallas Cowboys.
Dallas is sitting at a rough 2-3, with issues stacked up across the roster and a defense that has been one of the NFL’s weakest units. Still, Parsons made it clear on his podcast that he sees more in the Cowboys than the record shows. He even called them the No. 1 team in the NFC East, though that’s a shaky crown in a division where everybody has problems.
What stood out most was his belief that Dallas is closer than the standings suggest.
“But the thing I wanna say about the Cowboys is, with their record, it’s more deceiving than, like they showing so much good stuff off tape, they’re just a few stops away," Parsons said.
He doubled down on the offensive side of the ball, pointing to the scoring output while stressing that the defense is the side that has to clean itself up.
"You have the highest point per margin offense in the league, great," he added. "So... you know it’s not a problem scoring points.
It’s just about how, what’s the details, what’s the effort, and what’s the commitment gonna look like every day as a defense to say, hey, we’re gonna hustle to the ball, and we’re gonna get stops and play good coverage, and do the small details. That’s all they’re missing.”
Not everyone will buy that Dallas has been flashing all that much good football on defense. The unit has looked bad enough that optimism comes with a hard sell. And for all the talk of progress, this has a familiar feel for the Cowboys after last season’s 7-9-1 finish and another missed playoff run.
The silver lining for Dallas is that nobody in the NFC East is exactly lighting the world on fire. The Giants are only a few plays from being 1-4 and will be without their starting quarterback for the rest of the season.
The Eagles are coming off a brutal Week 5 loss and sit at 2-3. Washington is 1-3-1 and, as the source put it, can’t manage a clock, let alone win games.
That leaves a real opening for the Cowboys to win the division with as few as nine victories. The catch is obvious: if the defense keeps dragging the team down, even that number might be out of reach.
Dallas is making moves in an effort to fix it. Mike Pettine’s addition to help Christian Parker is viewed as a boost, and head coach Brian Schottenheimer said there will be "roster adjustments," though he didn’t say what those would be.
As for Parsons, he won’t be on the field when Dallas visits Lambeau Field in Week 6. The torn ACL he’s recovering from originally pointed to Week 6 as a target for his return, but that timeline has changed, and it’s still unclear whether he’ll be back this month.
He addressed the recovery process on the same podcast episode and explained why it’s taken longer than some expected.
“The biggest thing that people worried about with me, they're like, 'Man, why ain't he back yet?’” he said.
"If the Super Bowl was this week, I'm playing in the Super Bowl. But it's just about me making sure I have all the small things fixed first.”
With no Cowboys-Packers matchup on the horizon in 2026 unless the teams meet in the playoffs, the next scheduled meeting could come in 2027. Dallas does have one NFC North opponent on next year’s slate, but which team that is will depend on where the Cowboys finish and which NFC North club lands in the same spot.
In Other News...
Cowboys Already Have One Ugly Debate At 2-3
The Cowboys 2-3 start has already pushed the conversation past disappointment and into blame, which is never a comfortable place for a team this early in the season. Around Dallas, the usual list of culprits is starting to take shape, with owner and general manager Jerry Jones, head coach Brian Schottenheimer, defensive coordinator Christian Parker, player execution and injuries all landing under the microscope as fans try to make sense of what has gone wrong.
A fan survey is now feeding into that larger debate, asking whether the Cowboys are headed in the right direction. It fits the mood of a season that has moved quickly from expectation to unease, and it says plenty about how thin the margin has become when a team with this much attention is already trying to answer questions about its direction instead of its ceiling. [Read more 🡒]
Cowboys May Have One Fix For Problems On Both Sides
The Cowboys early-season frustrations on both sides of the ball have pushed the conversation back to an old football truth: when the ground game works, a lot of other problems get easier to manage. Dallas has been trying to find more balance on offense while also looking for ways to help a defense that has been pressed too often, and the rushing attack has become a clear area to clean up. It has been a quiet slide so far, with the unit sitting near the bottom of the league and Javonte Williams not producing the kind of rushing yards Dallas needs from him.
A stronger commitment to the run could give the Cowboys longer drives, better field position and some relief for a defense that would benefit from a little less time on the field. That makes the upcoming game against the Green Bay Packers a useful measuring stick, because the path to fixing one side of the ball may run directly through the other. If Dallas can get the rushing game moving, it might not solve everything, but it would at least give the team a more stable place to start. [Read more 🡒]
Why Chad Hennings Made Cowboys No 96 Mean So Much More
For the Cowboys, No. 96 will always carry a little extra weight because of Chad Hennings, the defensive tackle whose path to Dallas was anything but ordinary. Before becoming a fixture on the line and a respected locker room presence for nearly a decade, Hennings served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force and arrived in the NFL already well into his 20s, bringing a level of discipline and perspective that fit neatly with a franchise built on toughness and expectation.
What made Hennings so memorable was not just the football resume, though three Super Bowl rings make that case pretty quickly. It was the combination of his military background, his late start in pro football and the way he became a steady defensive force once he finally settled in with Dallas. Among all the players who wore 96, Hennings stood out because his story gave the number a meaning that went well beyond production on Sundays. [Read more 🡒]