Cowboys’ Jerry Jones resists comparing George Pickens talks to Micah Parsons
After finding a new defensive coordinator, arguably the second-biggest agenda point for the Dallas Cowboys this offseason will be handling an extension with wide receiver George Pickens.
After he set career-highs across the board in hauling in 93 receptions for 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns, he is set to receive a massive contract extension after just one year with the team. How he ends up landing that extension could be the messy part, though.
It was less than six months ago that Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones was in the middle of a disgruntled negotiation with Micah Parsons and agent David Mulugheta before it ultimately ended in Jones trading Parsons away to the Green Bay Packers.
Now, dealing with the same agent, there is rightful questioning about if the Pickens negotiation could follow the same trajectory.
“How bad do you want me? Does that mean you should have been at the doorstep the other night? I don’t want to get into those kinds of assessments of how much we’re trying,” Jones said at Wednesday’s end-of-season press conference. “He’s an outstanding player. We don’t have the same issues that we might have had [when the team traded for him], and we are very proud of when we signed Dak — certainly after this year, in my mind — we took on a real direction of doing things that are really friendly to his future with the Cowboys.”
However, he doesn’t want the comparisons of Parsons’ negotiation to muddy what is ahead with Pickens.
“So much of that has to do with the reading the move as you take the next step,” he said. “So, I wouldn’t dare to say that I’d do anything to a contract negotiation or comparison to any other contract. There won’t be any comparison.”
With that being said, he did mention that because the team did trade Parsons, they now have the flexibility within the league’s salary cap allocated to player compensation to sign a talent like Pickens, whereas they may not have been able to before.
“It put us in a position to have the flexibility,” Jones said. “No way in the world could we have had ever entertained having the player like Pickens for the future if we hadn’t made the trade. We would not have had flexibility. There was zero chance of having that money available for that.”
But as for the negotiation itself, consider all possibilities on the table.
“I can be whatever you want me to be,” he said. “I can be sweet, or I can be the other way, too — however we need to do it.”
