Acme Packing Company
The Packers’ deal for Micah Parsons draws one natural comparison: Ron Wolf’s franchise-altering acquisition of Reggie White.
The deal is certainly the biggest the Packers have made since White. Previous defensive free agent signings (Xavier McKinney, either Za’Darius or Preston Smith, Joe Johnson) were expensive, but they simply don’t compare. Even Charles Woodson, as pricey as his contract was, was an afterthought league-wide. There were no Charles Woodson sweepstakes; the Packers were the only team to offer him a deal.
But is the deal as big as the Reggie White signing? Let’s take a look at how it is and isn’t before we draw a final conclusion.
How the Parsons trade is like the White signing
There are some similarities between the two moves. Quite a bit of cloak-and-dagger and misdirection preceded both the Parsons trade and the White signing. We’ve been in a will they/won’t they holding pattern on whether or not the Cowboys would trade Parsons for at least a month now, and the Reggie White derby stretched out for quite a while, too. It hardly even seemed possible the Packers would sign him, right up until the moment they finally did. Even on the morning of April 6, 1993, the day White actually signed with the Packers, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported it was a done deal that White was headed to San Francisco. The next day, the front page of the Press-Gazette was a picture of White holding a Packers jersey.
White and Parsons also signed lucrative contracts, though the degree to which they are lucrative is…well, quite varied. We’ll talk more about that in the “differences” section.
It can’t be denied that both Parsons and White are great pass rushers, though. In his four years in the NFL, Parsons has recorded 52.5 total sacks, only 1.5 sacks fewer than the 54 White logged in the four years prior to signing with Green Bay. In that span, White was voted to four Pro Bowls and was named a first-team All-Pro three times and a second-team All-Pro once. Parsons, like White, has made the Pro Bowl each of the last four seasons but is just a two-time first-team All-Pro, logging two second-team bids as well.
And, of course, both of these moves made the Packers the center of the football universe for a time. The Packers are the talk of the NFL right now, just as they were when they signed Reggie White, the biggest name available in the early days of free agency.
How the Parsons trade differs from the White signing
But comparing the two, the differences really start to show the longer you look.
For starters, the scale of the contract is remarkably different. In some sour grapes reporting the morning after White signed with the Packers, the San Francisco Chronicle reported the Packers had offered White a four-year, $17 million deal with $9 million guaranteed. Adjusted for inflation, White’s deal is only worth about $38 million in today’s money, less than Parson’s will...
