While discussing edge rusher Micah Parsons’s decision to skip OTAs last week, Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy called the voluntary practices “an opportunity to improve” and that “it’s definitely an opportunity that’s been missed” for Parsons.
Parsons is back with the team for this week’s mandatory minicamp and he had a very different view of the way he’s spent the last few weeks. Parsons said he has always had “my own way of doing things” and noted that the team is going to be in training camp for a “very, very long time” this summer. Those practices will allow for more work in pads and with hitting while OTAs feature “a lot of individual and I can be doing that by myself or with my trainer.”
Parsons called himself “an undersized rusher that gets banged up every year” and that the spring is a time for “letting my body heal and grow, strengthen, and get ready for the year.” He tied that desire with his ongoing push for a new contract because he knows he won’t get the deal he wants if he isn’t able to be on the field at 100 percent.
“Understanding the business side of it, too,” Parsons said, via the team’s website. “This is all I have. This is all I have to offer to the Cowboys. Before you sign a contract, you go through a physical, before you’re even on a team. This is your engine. This is where all of my equity lies. I have no other equity to offer them, and availability is the best ability. If I’m not available when it really matters because my body is not healing property or I didn’t get all of the rehab I need to be successful, then that’s on me. It’s not on them. They’ll just find the next me.”
Parsons has 40.5 sacks in 50 regular season games and finding players who can do that isn’t an easy task. That’s made the Cowboys’ measured approach to an extension a surprise to some and it makes Parsons’s desire to be in the best possible physical condition ahead of the season easy to understand.
