According to Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, he offered the New York Jets Micah Parsons and a first-round pick for Quinnen Williams. It remains uncertain what truth is behind that, but it probably would have been better for Jones not to come out and say this.
Not only would this have been one of the worst trades in NFL history, outside of how good Williams and Parsons both are, but attaching a first-round pick to Parsons for any player who isn't the greatest quarterback of all time would probably not make sense. According to Jones, however, that's how highly he viewed Williams.
“I thought that much of Williams,” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas. He added that the deal didn’t go through because the Jets didn’t have the salary cap space necessary to pay Parsons,” per Jon Machota of The Athletic.
Now, as we look at what Jones has said in the past, he obviously wanted to improve the run game. Williams has been very good for the Cowboys and, frankly, has somewhat saved their defense.
Unfortunately for the Jets, he didn't do that in New York, but that wasn't his fault. As we see now and have seen over the past few years, Williams is as good as it gets when it comes to stopping the run and just making plays.
According to Jones, from the words he had to say on Friday, according to Machota, he understands that Parsons is a very impactful player, but he thought teams were working around him.
“Micah is very impactful, but we really hadn’t won with Micah,” Jones said Friday. “Not because of Micah. We just hadn’t won because (the opponent) was able to work around us having Micah. They ran right at him or they basically threw the ball quicker. Those are simplistic things. And there was no question that if we could replace him with four or five top players, (George) Pickens-type players … that was all in the thinking with Micah Parsons.”
I'd like to believe that if the Jets were offered a first-round pick plus Parsons in any deal, they would have made it. Maybe they didn't want to give Parsons the money he was looking for, but I just don't see a scenario where the Jets would have said no to that.