The entire NFL is watching to see how Parker approaches Week 2.
Christian Parker and his Dallas Cowboys defense put on a horror show of a performance in Week 1, and now attention turns to how the group will respond against the Washington Commanders.
After such a positive offseason, with hope that Parker could mastermind a defensive turnaround, what was put on film was just downright bad.
Now, the first game with a new coordinator and a handful of new players, that first outing was always going to be the worst.
Many just didn't expect it to be that bad.
Having been praised all offseason for his ability to communicate and teach his scheme, what Parker's message will be to his defense is what we all want to know.
So, Christian was asked that thing at The Star.
"I think that we just handling our stuff, our execution, the things that we can own, the things that we can control, that's the most important thing," Parker said. "They played a good game, hats off to them. But at the end of the day, it's about what we can control and what we can do. We didn't do that to our standard, to our level of performance.
"So now this week has been about retooling that and getting back to focus for the next opponent."
All of the attention on Sunday is purely focused on how this defense will look, and they will be without Malik Hooker (forearm) and DeMarvion Overshown (hamstring), so there will be a little shuffling for Parker.
After such an underwhelming debut in primetime, the Cowboys' defense will now have all the pressure on them to improve and show that last week was an aberration, not the norm.
The Commanders' offense has all the tools to hurt Dallas just as New York did with Jayden Daniels and his dual-threat ability, along with Stefon Diggs and Terry McLaurin, set to give Parker and his unit headaches.
All the talk this week has been about looking in the mirror, fixing the mistakes, making corrections, all so that this unit can come out breathing fire at AT&T Stadium, but how much confidence do we have that it will happen?
Right now, not much, but a lot can change in the next four quarters of football.
