Eye on the Opponent: Cowboys LB Micah Parsons Aims to Maintain Dominance vs Giants
Among the many challenges in their blowout loss to Las Vegas last Sunday, the largest might have been the New York Giants’ inability to slow down Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby from wreaking havoc on the pocket and juicing a Raiders team that was desperate to right the ship under a new interim regime.
Before they even get the chance to lick their wounds from a defensive beatdown that took the last breaths of meaning for their season and the health of starting quarterback Daniel Jones, the Giants must again prepare to protect their next gunslinger from another star edge rusher in Dallas who has learned how to dominate them in recent affairs.
Since he entered the NFL as the 12th overall pick in 2021, Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons has been the thorn in many opposing team’s sides. In his first two seasons donning the star, Parsons accumulated 149 tackles (106 solo), 26,5 sacks, six forced fumbles, and three fumbles recovered. He led the league in several rushing categories, including sacks, where he notched consecutive seasons of 13 sacks to power the defense to consecutive playoff appearances.
This fall, Parsons is on pace to potentially match or beat those numbers with 31 tackles (18 solo), 7.5 sacks, one forced fumble, and a fumble recovered in eight games. That current workload is good for ninth-best in the league for pass rushers and fourth-best in the NFC behind Danielle Hunter of the Vikings, Kayvon Thibodeaux of the Giants, and Haasan Reddick of the Eagles.
Against the Giants, Parsons has always been a player on the team’s radar and a pest to their offensive success. In five contests against New York, the Penn State product has 16 tackles and three sacks for 21 yards and has offered a constant pressure cooker on the edges that forces the ball out into the hands of Dallas’ nifty secondary.
The Cowboys' 40-0 shutout of the Giants in Week 1 saw Parsons tally three tackles and one sack to help keep New York away from their end zone in one of their most humiliating season openers. He had six total pressures in that game, most of which came as quick paths to the quarterback that forced errant throws into the ground or out of the field.
Shortly after that routing, Parsons criticized the Giants for not doing a better job to ‘protect’ Jones from an endless barrage of hits in the pocket by not pulling him in the fourth quarter when the game was out of reach.
The one element of Parsons' game that enables immense success at winning the pass rush is his unrelenting speed off the snap. At the 2021 combine, Parsons clocked a 4.39 40-yard dash time, which was good for eighth best among all the players at the event. The 24-year-old knows how to read the play and react to the snap beautifully, which allows him to gain the initial edge on the linemen and deploy his moves to beeline to the quarterback.
Parsons is adept at unleashing his arsenal of swim and double moves to create traffic that cracks down on the ball carrier’s escape lanes. If he senses the run up the middle, he’ll shift into the box and add an extra body that can stifle the rusher with speed and power at the point of contact.
Those two elements combined are the main reasons Parsons is ranked first in the league for pass rush win rate (33 percent) with a double team success rate of 29 percent. Only one other player for the defensive end position has a greater double-team win number through nine games, meaning the Giants are dealing with the best of the best and a player whose play style has occasionally been compared to the legendary Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor.
Last week, Parsons had his season-best performance of nine tackles and 1.5 sacks as the Cowboys fell just short against the Philadelphia Eagles. There’s no doubt he’d love to beat that in Week 10 against the deteriorating Giants, who don’t need another reminder of the caliber of player they passed on in the 2021 draft.
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