Blogging The Boys
What are you expecting Micah Parsons’ role to be in 2025?
All eyes are on Micah Parsons, though that’s hardly unusual. During the season, it’s usually opposing offensive coaches and players who constantly obsess over Parsons, where he’s at and who’s tasked with trying (and often failing) to stop him.
Right now, all eyes are on his money, specifically the lack thereof. Parsons’ rookie deal is set to expire after this upcoming season, and extension talks have been slow thus far. To no one’s surprise, Parsons has opted to skip voluntary workouts, though he recently pledged to show up for mandatory OTA’s, avoiding any potential fines or added drama.
While everyone is focused on whether or not a deal will happen - spoiler alert: it will, but not before a lot more hand-wringing - the bigger question regarding the superstar defender should be focused on what his role will be in 2025.
Since entering the league in 2021, Parsons has enjoyed a sort of hybrid role for the Cowboys. While his elite pass rush skills have meant that he’s going after the quarterback on the majority of snaps, it hasn’t kept him from being moved around the defense like a chess piece.
When Dan Quinn was in town, Parsons lined up quite literally everywhere. He spent most of his time on the line of scrimmage, but lined up somewhere different every snap. He would frequently start at off-ball linebacker too, before blitzing at the snap. Quinn even had Parsons lined up out wide as a defensive back on a couple isolated occasions.
Parsons’ role became a bit more defined with Mike Zimmer last year, but not restrictively so. While the 2024 season saw Parsons’ highest percentage of snaps on the line of scrimmage, Zimmer essentially built his scheme around Parsons having the discretion to line up wherever he wanted, with the star pass rusher saying this early in the season:
The fact that I got the creativity to control things where I know I got to be on my A-game always because I got these other guys depending on me now to like controlling that [alignment]. It kind of gets me more excited, it gets me more into it. It gets that drive, that hunger just a little bit more. Now I feel like I just can’t let this guy [Zimmer] down. He’s giving me the keys to the system.
Parsons still primarily played out on the edges, where he’s most comfortable and most effective, but the freedom to move around at will helped unlock a different animal for the Lion. It became common for Parsons to work as a linebacker mugging the A-gap on third downs, a popular front for Zimmer. He even took 17 charted snaps at defensive tackle, an alignment so unique that offensive linemen didn’t quite know what to do with it.
Zimmer is gone, though, and he’s replaced by Matt Eberflus. While there are some philosophical similarities between Eberflus and Zimmer - they both...
