https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/article/micah-parsons-trade-why-stockpiled-draft-picks-are-no-longer-a-cheat-code-for-dallas-cowboys-151622842.html
If you’re old enough to remember the Dallas Cowboys’ massive 1989 Herschel Walker trade, you surely have a soft spot for players-for-picks deals. Dallas swapped Walker for what would become eight draft picks, turning those picks into Emmitt Smith, Russell Maryland and other foundational members of the 1990s Cowboys dynasty. In the intervening years, the trade’s legend has grown to mythical proportions, the north star for generations of hapless fans who believe their woebegone team is just one savvy deal away from being a dynasty.
However … if you’re old enough to remember the Dallas Cowboys’ Walker trade, you’re also due for a prostate exam.
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Dallas has been chasing the dragon of that early-90s era for 30-plus years now, with diminishing returns. The latest evidence: Thursday’s blockbuster deal for Micah Parsons, in which the Cowboys dealt the game-wrecking four-time Pro Bowler to Green Bay for two picks and veteran Kenny Clark.
Cowboys fans, which remain surprisingly massive in number, will try to convince themselves that this was a checkmate move, dealing a discontented player away for chips that can be flipped into a superstar for the future. That’s the fumes of 1989 still lingering in their brains. The reality is far messier … particularly when you’re dealing away a star at the height of his powers.
Micah Parsons is bidding farewell to the Dallas Cowboys. (AP Photo/Richard W. Rodriguez)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
You can make a case that trading a middling or end-of-his-career player for draft picks is a good deal, turning a declining asset into an appreciating one. You can also make a case for dealing away future draft picks for another, higher-level pick.
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But Dallas fans thinking it’s 1989 all over again should remember one key element of that trade: Jimmy Johnson, the Cowboys’ coach at the time, was miles ahead of the rest of the NFL in understanding the value of picks. Johnson was playing 3-D chess at a time when most other GMs were basically eating their checkers. The rest of the NFL has caught up to those techniques by now.
Plus, draft picks are only as useful, and as good, as the team making them. You can end up with a bounty of picks that don’t pay off — like, for instance, Miami, which dealt away its No. 3 pick in 2021 to San Francisco for the 49ers’ first-rounders in the next three drafts. But Miami hasn’t exactly turned those three first-rounders into a dynasty, losing in the wild-card round in 2022 and 2023 and missing the playoffs entirely last year.
(Weird note No. 1: The 49ers used that pick on Trey Lance … so, yes, Trey Lance went for more first-round picks than Micah Parsons. The draft is unerringly strange.)
(Weird note No. 2: Miami would go on to deal the 2021 pick to Philadelphia, which dealt it to Dallas, which used it to pick … Micah Parsons.)
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Green Bay, meanwhile, made the eminently logical decision to trade two No. 1s and a veteran for Parsons. One highly unscientific way to judge whether a pick trade is a good deal is whether you would use that pick on the player you’re receiving in return … and it’s fairly safe to say that if Micah Parsons were available in the 2026 NFL Draft, he wouldn’t last to the lower third of the first round, where the Packers’ first pick is likely to fall.
As for the 2027 pick, this is a calculated gamble on Green Bay’s part: With Parsons as part of a ready-to-win-now lineup, the Packers ought to be in the playoff hunt for the next two years. And a bit of deft scouting and GM work can approach the return on a first-round pick in the 20s, given the high variance in NFL draft picks’ success.
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The whole reason why 1989 was such a landmark deal for Dallas is that those eight picks gave the then-godawful Cowboys the opportunity to rebuild their entire foundation. The 2020s-era Cowboys actually have — or had — a decent foundation in place. You use draft picks to shore up your foundation … but you don’t ever trade away your foundation for draft picks.
https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/article/micah-parsons-trade-why-stockpiled-draft-picks-are-no-longer-a-cheat-code-for-dallas-cowboys-151622842.html
