Should Cowboys Trade Sam Williams? Pass-Rusher 'Looks In The Mirror'
A new scheme taking shape should help the once-promising prospect, but the Cowboys should remain patient amid urges of a trade.
Video Transcript
We are quickly approaching the one-year anniversary of Micah Parsons' trade to the Green Bay Packers, and in light of Quinnen Williams inking a new three-year extension with the Cowboys, the conversation has been brought back into the light of who won this deal?
Did the Packers win the trade?
Did the Cowboys win the trade?
It's still being debated, especially now that Dallas' return package is essentially complete.
But reflecting on this deal always fills me with a strong sense of irony.
From the football world immediately crowning the Packers the winners, to Jerry Jones channeling his inner Aaron Rodgers in response to the backlash, essentially conveying the message to relax, as Aaron Rodgers famously did, to the Quinnen Williams acquisition and eventual extension, and then Rashawn Gary arriving in Dallas from Green Bay.
This saga has taken quite a few turns since it all began.
And Williams, of course, is part of the package that Dallas got back from Parsons because the first rounder that the Cowboys traded the New York Jets for Williams was acquired originally from Green Bay.
So he is directly inserted in the overarching return.
But some seem to continue anointing Green Bay the victor in this situation.
And A to Z Sports' Wendell Ferreira recently argued that Dallas' now completed return only reinforces how favorable the trade was for the Packers.
His case centered around Parsons being, quote, flat out better than Williams, Kenny Clark's declining value, the premium placed on edge rushers, and uncertainties surrounding Malachi Lawrence, whom the Cowboys drafted with the first round pick they acquired from the Packers this year.
And he also used the value that Parsons has exhibited as a member of the Packers defense as another reason, pointing to how poorly they performed after Parsons tore his ACL.
All fair points.
Those are all fair points.
But they do require some additional context.
To start, if we're simply ranking football players, Parsons probably does get the nod over Williams.
But Dallas didn't trade Parsons because it thought that it could get someone who was individually more talented than Parsons.
The Cowboys did so because it changed the entire construction of their defense.
Over the last 10 seasons, only one player has recorded double-digit sacks in the regular season and won the Super Bowl the same year.
And it was George Karloftis with the Kansas City Chiefs.
In 10 years, that's the only instance of it.
And additional context is even required there because Karloftis was benefiting from Chris Jones on the interior, who's a future Hall of Famer.
That does not in any way mean that elite pass rushers are unimportant.
But it does show that paying one massive money isn't necessarily a prerequisite to building a championship defense.
Dallas was strong on the outside and weak inside with Parsons.
Williams completely changes that equation.
And Clark no longer needs to be the player that he was during his prime in Green Bay, although he has looked fantastic in training camp thus far.
Not to mention, beyond the individual talents, Williams already appears to be a far better fit as a leader for the Cowboys locker room than Parsons was.
And as for Lawrence, the uncertainty that surrounds him, he was a first-round pick four months ago.
There's going to be some uncertainty there until he takes the field, at least in the preseason, against other NFL offensive players.
All we're going based off right now is training camp, which for a guy that just entered the NFL, what, 120 days ago, around that, it's not fair to place uncertainty on Malachi Lawrence as a reason why the Packers won this trade.
And I found it ironic that while he did touch on Lawrence as a part of the Dallas draft haul, he didn't reference Caleb Downs, who the Cowboys likely don't get if Micah Parsons is still on this team, because the Cowboys would not have been bad enough to be in position to either draft or trade up for Downs had Parsons not been moved.
So on paper, the Dallas defense is now considerably more talented than it was when this saga began.
That is just from the Cowboys' standpoint of things, why trading Micah Parsons benefited the Cowboys.
But what Ferreira didn't talk about was how in some ways this deal did hinder the Packers beyond just giving up Clark, who was a franchise cornerstone, and two first-round picks.
Parsons averages out to $47.5 million annually, and Jordan Love averages $55 million annually.
Committing more than $100 million in combined annual contract value to two players inevitably creates questions about how the Packers will be able to build around Love, which we've seen.
Love's weapons are not top tier, and maybe he would be able to become more of an obvious top seven-ish ranking kind of guy if he had a true elite number one receiver.
That's not knocking any of the weapons that the Packers currently have.
They're just not as good as I personally believe they need to be for Jordan Love to emerge as a true Super Bowl winning threat at quarterback.
Meanwhile, despite all the talk about Parsons vaulting Green Bay into another tier, the Cowboys and Packers essentially enter 2026 with identical win total expectations depending on the sportsbook that you look at.
Now, some of that is probably due to the fact that Parsons is going to miss some time at the beginning of the season, but the Cowboys had the fifth worst defense of all time last year, according to some metrics.
So it's kind of a give and take here.
Does that mean that Dallas won if we find all the ways to knock the Packers in this move?
Not necessarily.
But perhaps we're spending too much time treating this trade as though one franchise has to emerge victorious.
Green Bay got one of football's premier defensive players, and Dallas used that player's departure as the starting point for a more complete defensive reconstruction.
The Packers can love having Parsons once he's healthy, and the Cowboys can love moving him for what they did.
But one year later, those ideas don't seem nearly as contradictory as they once did, nor does acknowledging them require any sort of, quote, spin.
