00:00A wonderful Wednesday and delighted you are up early with us.
00:07Lewis has made his way to New York.
00:09It is wonderful to have Mr. Riddick here.
00:10Kmart ready to roll.
00:12Neek is here.
00:13We are jam-packed this morning and we dive right into the NFL
00:16where the action was in Oxnard yesterday.
00:20The Cowboys took the practice field for the first practice of their training camp.
00:24Micah Parsons still awaiting a long-term contract extension,
00:27mostly a spectator, citing tightness in his back.
00:32Then Micah, as soon as practice was over,
00:34sought out reporters and shared his frustrations
00:38with the way his negotiations have gone and with ownership.
00:42Listen to this.
00:44When you go around the league and you see these other teams
00:47taking care of their best guys, I see TJ got taken care of,
00:51Max got taken care of, Miles got taken care of,
00:54and he got two years left on his deal.
00:56So when it started, yeah, you see a lot of people around the league
01:00getting taken care of.
01:01You just wish you had something like that same type of energy.
01:06If they don't want me here, they don't want me here.
01:09I'll go about my business.
01:10I understand the nature of the business.
01:12Like I said, as long as I'm here and I'm under contract,
01:15I'm going to do what I have to do to perform at the highest level.
01:18But if this is the end, this is the end.
01:20Same way that Jerry Jones and Steven Jones
01:23and the other Jerry Jones take care of their family,
01:25it's the same way I need to take care of my family.
01:27I got my own three kids of my own,
01:29so I need to take care of my own family at the end of the day.
01:32Okay, so vastly different from the tone that we have accustomed to hearing
01:39from Dak Prescott in the past and some of the others.
01:42Nick, the first thing you said in our meeting,
01:44I think it was actually John Fink, our coordinating producer,
01:46who sat up out loud.
01:47You say it.
01:47This is a little bit of a different road he's taken.
01:50Yeah, I mean, and the idea that Trayvon Diggs is standing next to him,
01:53chiming in, reminding him of all the other players that are getting paid,
01:56like, it doesn't feel good.
01:58It feels like his mind is, obviously,
02:00Micah was incredibly professional throughout this whole process,
02:03and he seems to be a little bit more mature, honestly,
02:06handling this thing in a more mature way than Jerry Jones is.
02:09He said all the right things, but you can see the hurt.
02:11Like, he didn't seem happy,
02:13and I imagine his back would get a little less tight
02:15with a little more money in his pocket.
02:17Things would loosen up.
02:19Yeah, and what Fink said this morning was,
02:21maybe Jerry picked the wrong guy to pick a fight with.
02:24You know, Dak Prescott always handled everything,
02:26took all the slings and arrows and never really punched back and all that.
02:30Micah is a guy, and we've known it, we've seen it,
02:32and I've been critical of it at times for being as outspoken as he's been.
02:36I don't need my superstar linebackers making lists of the top 10 quarterbacks
02:41in the NFL and leaving his own off of it.
02:43But in this case, I'm 1,000% behind him saying what he thinks.
02:48You can tell he's not happy, and he has every reason not to be.
02:51No, he does have every reason not to be.
02:53You know what, let me just kind of, like, look at this
02:56and try to see this through Jerry Jones' eyes, all right,
02:58or from a front office perspective's eyes, right?
03:01I mean, look, when you go into the draft, and we do this every year,
03:03and you're building the football team,
03:05and you're looking at positions like quarterback, pass rusher,
03:08wide receiver, corner offensive tackle, the top five positions,
03:11Micah Parsons is exactly what you're looking for.
03:13This is exactly the kind of guy that you want,
03:15a guy who you've drafted, one of your own, homegrown, you've developed,
03:20you've seen him make you money selling merchandise,
03:23putting people in the stands.
03:25He plays hurt.
03:26He plays an impact position.
03:27He's young.
03:28He's healthy.
03:30To me, this is a no-brainer.
03:31This is one of those deals where you're sitting there going,
03:33I don't want to strike the worst deal for myself.
03:35I don't want to create drama.
03:36I want to put this to bed because I want to send the right message
03:39to everyone else on my football team, right?
03:41All those things, to me, seem to be just common-sense things,
03:44not this asinine bit of, well, I paid one guy, and look what happened.
03:48I didn't get my return on investment.
03:49He only played a couple games, and you're sitting there like,
03:52it's almost like you sound like you're betting against your own guys,
03:56especially when you take it to the 11th and 12th hour.
03:58That's exactly what you're doing because you know as time goes,
04:01you're not going to get a better deal.
04:02You're going to get a worse one.
04:03Why are you doing that, and why are you putting these messages out here
04:06against a young man like this who plays an impact position,
04:09who's done nothing but deliver for you?
04:11I don't get that.
04:12So yesterday I had an NFL exec tell me,
04:15I wonder why they keep putting a microphone in front of Jerry
04:18because he says too many dumb things.
04:21And I think when you have top-tier talent,
04:24but you make that top-tier talent feel ordinary,
04:27I think that's a dangerous game because you know how I am.
04:30I always liken the NFL, it's all about relationships, right?
04:33And for me, I feel like the quickest way to lose somebody,
04:37lose a relationship, is to make them feel unheard.
04:39To make them feel like, hey, you're just lucky to be here.
04:43And Micah Parsons, to Dominic's point, has done everything right.
04:46But he is the type of guy that will let you know,
04:49this isn't okay, this is how I feel.
04:52And no one understands why.
04:53Everybody is just as confused as Micah Parsons.
04:56And I think, I will say though,
04:57I'm not sure if it will be a big distraction during the season
05:02because I think it will end with him getting paid.
05:04The question for me is why?
05:06Why do we have to keep doing this?
05:08And is there damage being done during this process?
05:11Right.
05:11And I think one of the things that Jerry Jones does have working in his favor
05:15is he does this silly stuff all the time.
05:17Because you hear Micah in his comments say,
05:19like, yeah, this is kind of what he did to Dak.
05:22This is kind of what he does.
05:23And he recognizes that this is how Jerry operates.
05:25But it doesn't make it okay.
05:27And I think the fact that I brought up earlier about Stephon or Trayvon Diggs
05:30coming up there, like, when you got these guys coming together like that,
05:34like, that doesn't feel good because it's not just one person isolated.
05:37Everyone's like, it feels as though the whole locker room is thinking like,
05:41what are you doing?
05:42Yeah, and we were saying this in the meeting too.
05:44Like, there's always unintended consequences from conducting business this way.
05:48And it's not, look, there's not going to be a third down play.
05:50It's going to be third and two.
05:52And Micah has outside contain where he's going to sit there and go,
05:54you know what?
05:55Jerry made me wait for my money.
05:56I'm going to let this running back get outside of me and go for the first down.
05:59But what does happen is people don't show up in the offseason the way they want to.
06:04Guys don't wind up mentoring some of the young guys the way you want to.
06:07Guys don't put in the extra work the way you want them to simply because they feel as though,
06:11hey, look, I'm going to do exactly what is required by me and nothing extra.
06:15Because guess what?
06:16All during the way, they made me fight and scratch and claw and talk bad about me
06:20and put out all these, like, weird messages about me.
06:23Like, you just don't want to conduct business this way.
06:25And I don't get, look, Jerry's a very rich man.
06:27And he's built the Dallas Cowboys into the, what,
06:30the number one profitable sports franchise in the world.
06:35It's just amazing that your people skills would be this tone deaf to me.
06:39So the word, I think, that encapsules what you're talking about is culture.
06:43It's the culture that is created and the way that people feel in all of that.
06:46And the one thing they have done is prove me wrong.
06:48Because at the end of last season, I said they have two options.
06:51One, trade Micah.
06:52If you need a lot of pieces, trade, get a king's ransom form because the entire league
06:58would be dying to get him.
06:59Or two, just pay him.
07:00I didn't realize there's a third option, which is don't do either.
07:04So far, they've not done either of those things.
07:05It's almost August, and they've not done either of those things.
07:08There were two very obvious options, A and B, and they chose something that wasn't on the menu.
07:13Yeah.
07:13And I think to Lewis's point, like the culture stuff is important because it's not, there's
07:17only a couple people that can have this huge impact on the culture of your organization.
07:22Definitely the guy who owns it.
07:23And if the message that he's sending to you is this ain't serious, the message that you
07:27will internalize, and it's not a conscious decision, but you're right.
07:30It's the little things that creep into the things that are acceptable for you to do that
07:34you wouldn't have thought of before.
07:35And it's hard to be so critical of them because they have been like kind of successful over this
07:41run.
07:42It still just doesn't add up to like long-term and winning the big one.
07:46I remember talking to Brandon Bean, the Bills GM, when he signed Josh Allen to a big contract
07:52extension back in 2021.
07:54And he said, I had the best night's sleep after I got that done.
08:00And it's because you don't wait.
08:01The market value goes up.
08:03Good GMs just keep it, just know that they want to retain the best talent.
08:06See, that's critical right there, what you just said about Brandon Bean saying, look,
08:10I had the best night's sleep.
08:11Yeah.
08:11Don't you think you would have a good night's sleep paying Micah Parsons, that he's not
08:15just going to go in and then just tank it and be like, you know what, I got my back.
08:17I mean, if I'm Jerry Jones, I'd be like, here, now let me turn my attention to other things
08:22that need my attention.
08:23I'm not worried about you.
08:25I think Jerry has a good night's sleep when he's like, oh, we're going to be at the top
08:28and get up and get up again.
08:29We won the A block for the third day in a row.
08:33Congratulations.
08:33A block champs.
08:35He can rest easy on that one.
08:36Yes.
08:36No question about it.
08:37And by the way, I mean, it was 24, 23 hours ago, Adam Schefter sitting right here said that
08:43they haven't even made an offer.
08:45The Cowboys have not even begun.
08:46That's mind-boggling.
08:47And here we are.
08:48How is that?
08:49Camp has begun.
08:49Micah Parsons has tightness.
08:51How is that?
08:52Champions of the A block.
08:54Everything matters.
08:55Like everything, see, some of these things, they just start adding up and so it starts
08:58to feel like it matters.
08:59So that is a camp concern.
09:01We're going to take a look around the league at some other camp concerns right now.
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