Dallas Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons has had quite a start to his NFL career. The No. 12 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft has quickly established himself as one of the premier defenders in the league with some truly dominating performances.
He has earned Pro Bowl and All-Pro First Team nods in each of his first two seasons, taking home the Defensive Rookie of the Year award as well. That season, Micah Parsons also finished second in the Defensive Player of the Year award, as he hit the ground running as a pro.
In his first two seasons with the Cowboys, Parsons has racked up 26.5 sacks with 149 total tackles, 33 tackles for loss, 56 quarterback hits, 88 quarterback pressures and six passes defended. He has been a true chess piece for defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, but in 2023, he is preparing for a bit of a position change.
Micah Parsons is going to be deployed more as a pass rusher in 2023 after filling numerous roles in his first two seasons in the NFL. It will provide him a chance to rack up even more sack numbers, which will help him achieve his ultimate goal; making the Hall of Fame.
“When you talk about great careers, [when] you talk about the Hall of Fame, like I don’t think I just want to make the Hall of Fame. I just want to be known as one of the greatest Hall of Famers,” Parsons said. “There’s categories to everything. There’s good. There’s great and there’s like, perfect. … When you talk about me, I don’t want to just be mentioned in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, that’s a great accolade, but I want to be one of the greatest in the Hall of Fame.”
While Micah Parsons has a long way to go before calling it a career and potentially ending up in Canton, he is certainly off to a great start. His first two seasons are filled with gaudy numbers and accolades most players only dream of accomplishing throughout their entire career, let alone before their rookie contract is halfway finished.
The Cowboys have a long history of Hall of Famers donning their jersey and Micah Parsons is hoping he can one day join them. However, his ambitions go beyond just receiving a gold jacket. He wants to be remembered among the very best.
“They really just set the tone on what it meant to be, like, great, and how to separate themselves from others,” Parsons said. “And they all had their little swag, and when you talk about who had the records, Strahan still has the record for most sacks in a year. Then ‘Prime Time,’ anytime the ball was in the air, it was his. So everyone’s got something about them, and when you talk about the greatest, you think about those guys and how dominant and how a force they were. And Aaron Donald is going to have the same thing.”
In his opinion, that includes Lawrence Taylor, Jerry Rice, Deion Sanders and Michael Strahan. It will probably pain Cowboys fans to see Micah Parsons’s admiration for two New York Giants, but people in Dallas know how dominant they were based on how many times they terrorized their Cowboys throughout their respective careers.
