DALLAS — It’s a tale as old as time: The refs have it out for your favorite football team.
Still, you can go ahead and count Dallas Cowboys owner, president, and general manager Jerry Jones among those who believe unfavorable restrictions are being placed on his Defensive Player of the Year candidate Micah Parsons.
Fresh off another debilitating road loss -- this time, a 22-20 Christmas Eve defeat to the Miami Dolphins that dropped the Dallas Cowboys out of their first place catbird seat in the NFC East -- Jones was in the mood to quarrel with the officials after seeing his star defender mauled, with nary a yellow flag in sight, one too many times.
Speaking during his weekly visit on the "Shan & RJ" show on Audacy's 105.3-FM The Fan on Tuesday, Jones bemoaned a standard for calling holding penalties that doesn’t seem to jive with Parson’s top-of-the-league talents.
"There’s no question that Micah [Parsons] is having restrictions that, if turned loose, would result in a sack of the quarterback," Jones said.
Jones’ issue with the officiating stems from the belief that judgment calls are being made based on the capabilities of other players as an unfair reference point. Simply put, Jones believes Parsons is too fast and too good, and the Cowboys feel as though he's not being given a chance to make plays as a sort of mitigator for his skillset.
"They won’t call a holding penalty in a certain range of holding, usually, if they don’t think the player would’ve gotten to the quarterback to begin with," Jones explained. "That doesn’t work for Parsons because he’s about to get there almost all the time. Anything that just limits him should be a hold."
Despite going months without a holding call going in his favor, Parsons continues to be a force for the Dallas defense. An All-Pro in each of his first two seasons, the third-year linebacker has fully committed to his pass rush pursuits in 2023 -- and that has paid off with 13 sacks, which puts him just half a sack off his career high with two games to play.
While also leading the league in pressures on opposing quarterbacks, the former first-rounder has 30 QB hits and 15 tackles for loss as the Cowboys secured their third consecutive double-digit win season this year -- and, along with it, a playoff spot.
Still, Parsons has also echoed Jones’ feeling that he is being held back from doing even more.
After Dallas’ latest loss on Sunday, which dropped them to the NFC’s No. 5 seed, Parsons had choice words for the officials.
"It’s mind-blowing, the things that are getting called, and the positions that we get put in," Parsons told the media after the game. "I know a lot of it is B.S., but it’s the world we live in. We’ve got the star on our helmet. It’s just hard to play defense."
Regardless of the lack of penalties, the Cowboys have put themselves in a precarious position following their second consecutive loss to AFC East opponents away from home. The result kicked them out of first place and reinserted the Philadelphia Eagles atop the division.
Barring an unforeseen change in the season’s final two weeks, Dallas appears locked into a Wild Card game on the road to open a playoff run filled with road games should they advance. That's problematic for the Cowboys, who have yet to figure out how to win away from AT&T Stadium. Despite going 7-0 at home with nearly a blowout win in each contest, the Cowboys are 3-5 on the road.
It will take more standout efforts from Parsons for Dallas moving forward to buck that possibility.
Or, to hear Parsons and Jones tell it, it might also take a reevaluation on how defenders of his caliber are officiated.
"This is not the first time that penalties have been defined by the unique skills of a player, [and] not the first time at all it's happened to us," said Jones. “This one has to be worked through."
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