Stephen A. & Mad Dog GET INTO IT over Jerry Jones’ ‘DISRESPECTFUL’ comments 👀🍿 | First Take

Cowboys best defensive player requested a trade on Friday. He posted a lengthy statement on social media explaining his decision. Micah has been at Cowboys training camp. Often not standing too far away from Jerry, but the Cowboys owner says he hasn’t spoke to Micah since he requested a trade. Gentlemen listened to Jerry yesterday. When does it become urgent that we need to get some something resolved one way or another that he’s on the field against Philadelphia? again uh your definition of urgent uh uh is not necessarily u I don’t give believe you gave a definition of urgent okay and so urgent so uh I stay urgent as what it is is what it is and uh uh we’ve we’ll work through it or we will uh not work through it okay any confidence that he will be on the field against Philadelphia again no absolutely not uh that has to a big part That is his decision. How would I know that? I’m just saying. No, but I’m urgent. I don’t even know what any of that meant. Anyway, uh Stephen A, maybe you can explain it to me. Will this Micah Jerry dispute impact the Cowboys season? I think it will. I think it will because I think things have changed and I think that the culture and the climate of the world of sports is something that we have to pay attention to, doggy. This is not some situation where there’s a contract dispute. And that’s what I want everybody to understand here. This is a situation of a multi-billionaire owner who’s considered uh you can say whatever you want about him as a as as a football executive, but as a business mind, there is nothing but profound respect that has been earned by Jerry Jones. to talk to a player, a 25, 26 year old player without his representation and to try to promote that as a an agreement having be reached before it was breached is as egregious as it gets. David Mulliga is one of the best agents in football. He is universally respected. He is the agent of record that represents Micah Parsons. He has not spoken to Jerry Jones in months. He has not spoken to Stephen Jones and these guys. That’s not That’s unacceptable. That’s what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about a player that, oh, I I think I deserve this money and I’m holding out. No, we’re talking about an owner that’s going before the public in front of the media and portraying something that’s egregious. Yo, we talked. We haven’t talked in months. and giving the impression that somehow your conversation with this player without his representation equates to an a deal being reached even in this business. I’m a grown ass man and if I sat up there and I talked to Jimmy Petaro or I talked to Bob Igo I talk to Burke Magnus or Dave Robinson. Guess what I got to do? Yeah, we can have this conversation but you got to talk to my representation in order to close the deal. There is no deal unless my agent says, “Yo, we got a deal done.” Jerry is trying to circumvent that. And nobody I don’t know whether they’re asking him or not because I’m not hearing the questions that they’re asking, but based on his answers, he’s not addressing that fact. Why are you talking and acting like you have an agreement with a 25 26 year old player entering his fifth year in the league and thinking you have an agreement when you haven’t spoken to his representation? That’s the issue. And I agree with you on that. You want me to go? Yeah. Okay. Because I do agree with Steve on that. Jerry seems to think he made this deal with Parsons without getting into the agent. You’re 100% correct. But two things. First off, you and I have discussed this an awful lot. He’s got a contract. He’s supposed to make $21 million this year. It’s the fifth year of the rookie contract. He’s 24. Uh is his fourth year? Yes. Uh is his fourth year. Whatever it is, he’s making $21 million. He’s got a contract. Number two, he’s not missing any games because he’s not giving up $1.2 million a game. And that’s and that’s the amount of money that he wouldn’t get paid. And his career is too short. You’re not giving up a million if you do the math. 21 million divided by 17 is about to talk about 1.2 million. Nobody is going to miss a game and give up a $1.2 million paycheck. So the idea that somehow Thursday on the 5th of September, four weeks from tomorrow, he is not going to be on a field that the link is ridiculous. Now you’re going to go the other way. I know where you’re going. Distractions, not good for the team. This is going to upset their chemistry. That’s where you’re going. But it’s because it’s true. Okay? This isn’t Look, this isn’t just about making deals. This isn’t just about signing contracts. It isn’t just about winning in the boardroom. It isn’t just about honoring the contract, which we know contracts aren’t really honored in the NFL because they they because there’s a salary cap and there’s voidable years and teams ask guys to take pay cuts. Guys ask teams to renegotiate deals before they actually mature because that’s just the way business works because of how the salary cap works. Here’s the thing though. It’s not like Jerry hasn’t already approached this player about signing him to an extension. He’s already done that informally, albeit one-on-one with him, but he understands that aspect of the business and that it’s time to do that. The fact though, as Stephen A is pointing out, is that he hasn’t had any conversations with his representation is unprofessional. I agree. It’s unprofessional. The fact that he won’t contact him now is petty. the fact that you can’t seem to strike a deal with one of the easiest contract negotiations in the National Football League right now in terms of what impact does this player bring currently, what has he done in the past, and what can we project him to do in the future is just dumb. It’s just dumb that this isn’t done. And the fact that we sit here and every day he provides us with another sound bite, another one. Well, what’s your confidence that he’ll be on the field come week one against the Philadelphia Eagles? Well, I’m not very confident. It is what it is. What do you mean it is? No, it’s not. Is what it is. This situation demands a lot more respect than that. And if I’m Micah Parsons, I’m telling you what. I’m telling you what, if I could, if there was some way I could get the hell out of there, I would. And I’m I guarantee you so would he. But he knows he has no leverage. This is he’s going to play this year on his fifth year option. He’s going to probably get if he didn’t sign the contract extension, then Jerry could franchise him. And people like to use this word all the time in the NFL. We control the player for the next couple years via the fifth year option, via the franchise tag. We control where this player goes. And I hate that damn word, but it’s the truth. Here’s what’s important to understand. Players hate this all the time. You know, they’re under contract. You know, we’ve seen the NFL go to players ask for them to take a pay cut, restructure their deals, etc., etc. We know this kind of stuff happens in the NFL. They hate when you put it on their shoulders and we ignore the onus that belongs in this particular instance for example to a guy like Jerry Jones. You’re sitting back and your mentality is is that he can’t go anywhere. Essentially, we own you. You know how players feel about that, right? That’s number one. Number two, when you have that kind of mentality because you can restrict their movement and they can’t go anywhere. If you’re Micah Parsons, if Micah Parson said, “You know what? I’m gonna go out on that field today. I’m gonna play. Okay, I’m going to go into the last year of my deal and I’m going to announce to the world ahead of time, this is my last season in Dallas. You know what? He’ll be considered a pariah because he’ll be considered a distraction to the team and then all of a sudden we’ll forget all the noise that was being made by Jerry Jones and about by Stephven Jones about him just because they had that leverage. We can’t allow that to happen. We understand it’s a negotiation. We understand that in the end that he’s under contract, but the point is there’s a level of professionalism that is absent here. And why is that? It’s completely unnecessary to not talk to his agent who is one of the highly respected agents. And this is not a novice. This is some no-name dude. This is the dude that got the Shaun Watson 230 million guaranteed. This is the dude that got a bevy of players a boatload of millions, exceeding billions. The bottom line is there is no excuse not to pick up the phone and talk to his representation. See, the thing is, look, it’s a different argument. Jerry already know the the point of contention here is not whether or not Micah deserves to have a new contract put into place now or he should he play out his deal? Jerry already knows that he needs to get a contract extension done with this player. It’s the manner in which he’s going about it. It’s the unprofessional way in which he’s going about it. the way in which he is taking this public. That is the thing that really right now has a lot of people up in arms, me included, because that’s just ridiculous. It should not, it’s absolutely should not come to this that I mean, everyone knows all the high-profile players, every single player, whether you’re high-profile or not, profile or not, every player is represented by somebody by and large with Lamar Jackson notwithstanding, right, who does his own contract. But this is a situation here where now where you are willfully saying, “No, I haven’t contacted the agent. I haven’t had contact with him in weeks, months, ever.” Like, how petty and stupid does that sound? Look, there’s a business side of football, but there are unintended consequences with what he’s doing. There are other guys who are on this football team who are watching. And if you think for a second that they are going to go the extra mile and do the extra to try and get themselves to the top of the heap in the NFC East and do those little extra things like the Philadelphia Eagles are doing, like the Washington Commanders are doing to put them over the top, I’m telling you, players will look at this just as a money grab and they won’t be invested the same way he expects them to be because people take notice of this kind of thing. Let me push it forward. I’m glad you brought up Washington and Doggy. I’ll come to you on this. Which team do you think could have uh least used a distraction this off seasonason? Would you say it’s Washington because of the young Cincy in in there as well? No, Cincinnati is used to it. They’ve been down this path a thousand times. I totally disagree with you guys about Dallas. Once the season starts, the season starts. The Cowboys be ready to play. I remember one thing about the contracts. The CBA, the union is the one who gave who put together the five-year contracts because the veterans did not like rookies coming in and making all that money when they’ve been playing for 5 years. So this is a negotiated for the CBA between the owners and the union. And D Marie Smith wanted five years for every rookie. So this is this is not the NFL. This is not the NFL or Jerry Jones. The union put the five-year thing on the rookies. Yeah, but Jerry Jerry’s already acknowledged that they’re going to redo the manner in which he’s doing but the idea that somehow he deserves more. No, the contract you’re not allowed to in five years. Well, he deserves more. But Jerry knows he deserves more. That’s why he tried to negotiate with the player himself. But the CBA says you play for 5 years before you are unrestricted free agent. He hasn’t played five and he hasn’t played for five years. I just don’t understand why you bring stuff like that up. You really get you really get on my nerves with that. You’re going to stop this. You’re going to play organiz you can point us both all you want to play. Here’s the reality in baseball. Mr. Baseball, I get your point. In football, no matter what, you can go to a quarterback, a running back, a linebacker, a safety, a quarterback, whomever. Hey, we need to restructure your deal. You could have played lights out. You still going to count too much against your c. We get to restructure deal. We get to ask you to take a pay cut. We get to cut you. We get to do all of that in the National Football League, but you want to come with the plays and go like this, y’all. You’re under contract. You’re under contract. That’s an old commodent point of view. You’re not It’s not going to fly here. You need to stop that. It is not the correct one. Excuse me. Excuse me. Why aren’t you feeling that way about the owners then? You you I don’t care about the owners. Exactly. That’s the problem. I don’t care about you seem to care about it. I’m not interested. But you care about the players being restricted and not exercising some level of maneuverability to elevate their Well, why did they sign a 5-year contract with the Excuse me. That’s a collectively bargain thing. First of all, there’s over 1,600 players in the National Football League. Okay. Excuse me. How many at the negotiating table? I mean, you’re at the mercy of You got to vote. What are you going to do? It’s not like there’s a consensus. It’s not like like all 1600 players said, “Yeah, you know what we want to do? We want to have five years.” That’s not it. And the fact of the matter is this. I asked a bunch of people at Mad Dog. Are there are there rules and stipulations as yours? What would they say? Jerry has already said, “Look, we know that the time has come in order to pay and he will get paid again.” So, that isn’t the point of contention here. The point is how he’s doing it. How he’s going to talk to the agent. We agree with how he’s going about it. You know I don’t talk to the agent agent agent but you don’t care at the end of the day. Oh, you care about my talk to the agent. He won’t talk to him. I do think Washington would be the most affected with the McLaren thing. Younger team quarterback. He’s been there a while. I’m surprised you don’t even like wide rece. You don’t even think wide receivers matter. So I’m shocked that you’re But I think with the quarterback, you know, you don’t you got to make sure he’s okay. He’s got good symmetry with him. So I would think Washington. Yeah, but but you said last week that Terry McLaren had a contract and he should be just playing and he should be happy and then at the end of the year you know how I feel about these receivers with these contracts and so far see you know you know what happens too much you know what happens too instead of us taking every case case by case and treated it as an individual case which it is you know what we like to do in in football when we’re talking about players and contracts and when we should resign guys and whether or not 30-year-old should be a cut off point whether this position is more valuable than that. We like to kind of like gather up all these statistics and kind of try and blanketly like apply it to every individual situation. If Washington doesn’t have Terry McLuren healthy and playing this year for 15 16 plus games, they are in trouble. Did you say the same thing when Hill left the Chiefs? Okay. Patrick Mahomes was in what year? Four. Year four of his career then. Still he’s good. You You’re the one who’s been telling me that Daniel is a top three quarterback. They’ve been playing one season though. One one. Did you say that when they were establish when Diggs left Buffalo? Did you say that the C Bills last year would have major problems without Digs again? Where’s Josh Allen at in his development? And where’s Jaden Daniel? I’m not worried about Daniels. He’s good. The answer to this question is the Cowboys. Their defense wasn’t good when Micah was on the damn field for the 13 games he played last year. Okay, did you see that defense last year? Excuse me. They couldn’t stop the run. You understand? They couldn’t run the ball, couldn’t stop the run. We get that part, right? Micah Parsons, if he misses anytime, that’s problematic. If he’s got an attitude and he’s not all in, that’s a problem. And here’s the biggest reason why, which is fun for me, because you see that’s gonna put more pressure on Dak Prescott. You see, because you got to make up for it because you got the scoring bunches. You got Pickkins now coming over from the Steelers. You’ve got CD Lamb, your $136 million man. Okay, you got that brother going. I know Rico Dattle is no longer there running the football for you, but damn it, you barely ran the football anyway. Which made me laugh because Brian Shottenheimr said the same thing. your Mike McCarthy said, all right, that everybody said before that, oh, we gonna run the football. We gonna run the football. And they never run it because since Dak is there and Jerry paying those dollars, damn it, I’m giving you 60 million a year. Go out and throw that damn football, guy. Go ahead and get it done. That’s what he’s looking at. Right. So, and that’s before he got an additional weapon for CD Lamb. Opposite side of CD Lamb to throw the football to. Oh, yes. That’s what Jerry is looking at. Jerry’s probably sitting there. I don’t have anything to worry about paying this man $60 million. And you missed nine games last year after I agreed to pay you that money. You owe me. You go out there and you fling that damn football. You resemble Joe Burrow. Put up 33 plus for five, six, seven, eight. He’s not. That’s my point. Which is why Micah is that much more important than we’re realizing. You know, you know why I say I still say Washington though? And nobody really believes that Dallas is going to be there in the end any No, we don’t. That’s why I say, you know what? Okay. Yeah, it’s important for Micah to be there. It’s important for the team and it’s important for people to do business the right way. Yes. But in the long run, who do we really think is a contender in the East and in the NFC overall. We think it’s Washington cuz we think that Jaden Daniels isn’t just a star, right? We think Jaden Daniels can be the face of the NFL. But that’s why I think he has to have the people around. Wait a minute. He’s got the organization, the coaching, not just Quinn, but Kingsbury has done a good job. You know, I’ve been on him in the past. I didn’t feel he deserved a head coaching job in Arizona, but he did deserve the offensive coordinator’s job in the nation’s capital. He’s proven he’s done an outstanding job. So, you’ve got the organization, you’ve got the coaching, you’ve got the structure and the culture together and you got to start at the quarterback position. I think he has the ability. I’m not saying you don’t need McLaren because I know he’s special. But I’m saying I think that that what they have in place has the ability to overcome McLaren’s absence for a little while more so than Dallas. Dallas got to start off strong to have a chance. That that’s where See, that’s where we just disagree a little bit cuz they’re so geared towards Terry being such an integral part of what they do that you take him out. Look, Debo can’t pick up that slack. Okay, I know they like the rookie Jaylen Lane from Virginia Tech who is an absolute burner that couple of weeks. Couple weeks. Heat. Heat. N.

Stephen A. Smith, Chris “Mad Dog” Russo and Louis Riddick join Molly Qerim on First Take to discuss the ongoing situation where the Dallas Cowboys star LB Micah Parsons holds in at camp after requesting a trade.

0:00 Jerry Jones latest comments
1:17 Stephen A. calls this “unacceptable”
3:45 Mad Dog respects the contract
4:50 Riddick on the culture
6:44 Stephen A. about the implications
9:20 Comparing to the Terry McLaurin-Washington Commanders situation
11:40 Debate gets heated
14:40 Dallas without Parsons

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42 comments
  1. Restructure doesn’t mean pay cut smh how does Stephen A have a job when he doesn’t understand business?? Restructure is just moving the money around to manipulate the cap. They still make the same money. Just wow with these analysts

  2. This is what PrimeTime was talking about. This era is full of paycheck players. Dallas is a team, not one person. His contract should secure him as is unless he smokes it up. Play the game. When a championship.

  3. Completely wild that people expect Jerry to sit down and have some contract negotiation with Micah’s agent while he’s under contract. He’s under no obligation to “make a deal.” You’re under contract bro

  4. As someone who does not like the Cowboys, I pray to God Jerry lives till 150 yrs old bc you know that man is Charlton Hester’ing the GM job

  5. I'm curious everyone talks abt J. Daniels being a star, bc he has the intangibles, but most importantly coaching. U ride Dak who until J D rookie yr had the best rookie season, hat coach did Dak have?

  6. This whole he needs to have his "representation" present is laughable when when Micah has no problem saying whatever he wants without his representation when he's dogging his team's effort when he's too hurt to play or not showing up in big games and puts coaches under the bus during interviews and on his podcast. Trading him for a couple top draft picks is the best thing for them. Remove the cancer from that locker room.

  7. My take? NFL is entertainment and is classified as such. Therefore this Micah Parsons thing isn't real. It's just entertainment. This is how Jerry operates. It's one of many reasons why the Cowboys are the most valuable sports franchise in the world. And you people eat it all up like candy. Parsons will get his contract and it'll be like this never happened. It's a storyline, just like what WWE does.

  8. Why Has Parson's Agent Not Called Jerry??? And Just Maybe This Is Jerry's Way Of Telling Parson's To Just Shut Up, You've Ran Your Mouth Sense The Draft.. I Am The Only Voice Of The Cowboys.. Understand???

  9. I said this way back when Lamar was fighting for his money, agent no agent,, the real guilty party is the NFLPA, for ever giving the Owners the " Franchise Tag" The NFLPA Is The Worst Union Ia All Of Sports.. Fact.

  10. This is STUPID because the agent works for the player!!!!! The player has final say over everything. And if he wants the team to strictly deal with his agent. He should say Jerry any kind of contract talk has to go through my agent. That’s what being an adult is. He’s a big boy.

  11. After watching more and more, i like mad dog more than these flip flops that they bring on. Love it when he calls them out for flip flopping on takes.

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