Jake Hofer (2:06)
I'm Jake Hofer and this is back 40, a limited series show on Wire to Hunt, part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network. Each episode I'll be asking eight whitetail hunting pros a focused, thought provoking question about hunting and land management. How do I hunt the best part of the farm with less than ideal access should you. That's what the real question is. Stand without good access is not a good stand. Listen to Back 40 on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for listening to the Best of the Herd podcast. Be sure to catch us live every weekday on Fox Sports radio and noon to 3 Eastern, 9am to noon Pacific. Find your local station for the herd@foxsportsradio.com or stream us live every day on the iHeartRadio app by searching Fox Sports Radio or FSR. This is the Best of the Herd with Colin Cowherd on Fox Sports Radio. Welcome in to the Herd. I'm Danny Parkins in for Colin Cowherd. Always a thrill to be sitting in the big chair for Colin, who will be back soon because it's football season. We made it, though there still is plenty of drama. Taron Armstead will join us in just over 20 minutes. In an hour, I'm going to try to call Colin on the air to remind him that Caleb Williams is good. My guess is he won't pick up. We got a lot of things to do and starting Monday, we'll hear more about it later. The new expanded First Things first on FS1. I'm thrilled to tell you about it. I'll be on from five to six Eastern every single day, and if you've ever watched me or listen to me, you know that I don't love talking contracts because generally speaking, they all get done. But the preseason ends on Saturday, which means it becomes game week for all these teams, which means it's about to get real for contract talk. And I got to admit, even as someone who doesn't like talking money, I don't like the pocket watch aspect of it. And the vast majority of these guys ends up signing their deals. I have to admit that the television producer that doubles as the general manager of the Dallas Cowboys and the owner and apparently a star of a documentary, the documentary, by the way, pretty good. Jerry Jones. He's given us some tremendous color here on the Micah Parsons stalemate, negotiations impasse, and it's getting wildly, unnecessarily ugly in Dallas. But depending on your point of view, maybe that's exactly what Jerry Jones wants, because he's just here for the soap opera the Clicks, and we're feeding into it because here we are on the biggest show talking about the biggest story and the biggest team and their best defensive player who remains unsigned. So let's catch you up on it. Jerry Jones goes on Michael Irvin's YouTube show just yesterday. And he gives us a very colorful update on how the negotiations are going. We wanted to send the details to the agent. The agent told us to stick it up our ass. We had our agreements on term amount guarantees, everything. We were going to send it over to the agent, and the agent said, don't bother, because we've got all that to negotiate. Well, I'd already negotiated. I'd already moved off my mark on several areas. It's the mama daddy deal. You go into mama, and she won't do it, and she's the boss, so she won't do it. So you run into daddy. Daddy says do it. And then you go back in, say, mama, Daddy said it was all right. I don't think that Jerry Jones traffics in the world of embarrassment very often, but Jerry should be embarrassed. The agent in question is David Mologheta. David Mologhetta, through multiple media sources, has put out, basically, I'm not going to do any interviews, But I did not, nor did anybody with athletes first as agency tell Jerry Jones or the Cowboys to stick it in their ass, whatever. That didn't come up. So David Mulligetta is disputing the use of that colorful language. But let's just forget about the language there that Jerry is addressing here. Jerry Jones is saying that there is not room in the negotiation between the Dallas Cowboys and Micah Parsons for Micah Parsons agent. Now, I have an agent. I know most of you don't. You're lucky. That's the only reason we have agents, is to do the negotiation. It's the only reason we pay the Commission. Maybe it's 3%, maybe it's 1%, maybe it's 5%, maybe it's 10%, depending on the industry. For Micah Parsons, it's probably in the neighborhood of 1 or 2%. But the point is, he pays arguably the top agent in football a percentage of what will be the largest defensive contract in the history of the NFL to do the negotiation. Jerry did not stop there because I will get into where I think this actually ends up here in a minute. But allegations about colorful language. No room in the negotiation for Micah Parsons, his agent. Jerry did not stop on his media tour with the posturing of how he looks at the timeline to get a deal done with Micah Parsons. We really got three years to work this thing out. I did that with Dak, and we couldn't agree. So Dak played his last year of his contract, and then we franchised him. Of course, ultimately, we got a contract made. Dak the highest paid player in the NFL. So the president is handling it like Dak. But in this particular case, then Micah comes in and plays this year under his contract and then Dutton. It's very costly. Okay, so no one likes math on tv. But we'll just. Let's just go through some facts here for a second. Micah Parsons is set to make roughly 24 million bucks this year. So at the end of that, from the Michael Irvin show and Jerry Jones, look, if he doesn't, it's going to be very costly. Jerry Jones is 100% correct. Every game missed by Micah Parsons is roughly $1.3 million that Micah Parsons will not get paid. That's just money you can't earn back. So I think Micah Parsons is going to play Week 1 because I think he would rather play for $1.3 million than not play and get zero. It's a revolutionary thought. That's where I'm at. Then Jerry's saying, really takes three years. And he's right because there's this year. And then they could franchise tag Micah Parsons and then they could franchise tag Micah Parsons again for 120% of what he'd be due to make next year. Now the player would be unhappy and he's already demanded a trade and scrub the Cowboys from all the social media. And frankly, that's not good for the team to have a premium player locked into the salary cap because there's no flexibility. 100% of the dollars are guaranteed. You can't move it around for salary cap purposes, that sort of thing. But I absolutely believe Jerry Jones, that he talks to Micah Parsons about money, that he feels like he even moved off of his place. And I believe Jerry Jones that he is willing to make Micah Parsons the highest paid defensive player in football. But here's what I also believe, that that's not good enough. That if I was representing Micah Parsons, I wouldn't be saying, well, yeah, I just have to get a dollar more on the average annual value than T.J. watt, just over 41 million a year. Or I just got to get a dollar more than the largest guarantee ever for a defensive player. And Miles Garrett at 122 million a year because those guys are three plus years older than Micah Parsons. Micah Parsons is going to be the highest paid defensive player ever. The question is going to be by how much is he going to shatter the record for a non quarterback? Is he going to shatter the record for a defensive player? And there's no reason for you to get too deep in the weeds on who these agents are. But David Mologhetta is something of a cult like figure in NFL circles because he's the guy who got Deshaun Watson the fully guaranteed contract, the 100% of your money contract as being guaranteed. He's the new thing. He's the power broker in the NFL. He represents Jordan Love, C.J. stroud and a bunch of guys. But here's another way that I know that Jerry is not being totally truthful in this entire thing. There are other players on the Cowboys who are represented by David Mologhetta, who is Micah Parsons agent. So he's been able to get business done. So when he's talking about this agent wants to make a name for himself. This agent is trying to be the big third party in this deal. There's only room for two parties, me and Micah Parsons. He's done deals with Mulligetta's agency before. Malik Hooker is on his team this year. Signed. And Jerry Jones, I know he likes to say that he's the general manager and I know he carries the title of general manager, but no one believes that he's scouting the Senior bowl and grinding tape on fifth round prospects. He likes it for vanity. He likes it for ego. Do we really think that when Jake Ferguson signed his $52 million deal with Dallas, it was like Jerry Jones and Jake Ferguson drinking some Johnnie Walker Black and just haggling back and forth? I think it should be $12 million a year. No, I think it should be $14 million a year. No. The Cowboys negotiator dealt with the player's agent because that's how it works. So this is very old school. This is very. If you've watched any of the documentary, you know, good old boy from Arkansas comes into Texas, strikes it rich with an oil well, buys the Dallas Cowboys. He bought the Dallas Cowboys for $140 million. He's probably going to have to give Micah Parsons more than $140 million. So he got the team for 140 million. He's about to give a player more than 140 million. Jerry Jones is living in the stone Ages. He's living back in the 80s. It's just not how it's done anymore. And so ultimately this is all posturing. And I believe that Micah Parsons will be unhappy. I thought the Post with the Allen Iverson quotes and the waving goodbye and the scrubbing of the social media, frankly, I thought he was a little late. That's like a millennial playbook 101. You scrub the social media, you make it like, oh yeah, I'm real serious. I'm real serious about this trade. I'm real serious about sending out games. Chris Jones set out a game 1 guys don't sit out games anymore. There's too much money at stake. This isn't even the Emmett Smith thing from back in the early 90s where he misses a couple of games, signs the deal and then the Cowboys go on to win the Super Bowl. There's just too much money. These deals get done. So I will stay where I've been for months on this, that this is publicity for a new season. This is publicity for a documentary and deadlines make deals. And we saw with Dak Prescott, as referenced by Jerry Jones, the deadline was the opener when he signed that deal. I expect Micah Parsons to be playing against Philadelphia and this is just a lot of noise, embarrassing noise, but noise all the same. Which brings us to the other unsigned contracts here because it's a I will admit this is a unique NFL off season and that we have three A list tier one players who are still unsigned. Terry McLaurin in Washington, Trey Hendrickson in Cincinnati, and of course as discussed, Micah Parsons in Dallas. Now, I don't think Dallas is a Super bowl contender, but they do. Washington obviously think it's a Super bowl contender. They were in the NFC Championship game last year. They had Laramie Tunsil. They add Deebo Samuel and Cincinnati knows that they've got a Super bowl caliber offense and they scored enough points last year to be a 12 or a 13 win team. But they only scored nine because their defense was historically bad. I mean the Bengals were had a losing record. They were 3 and 4 in games where they scored 30 or more points. So we'll just go through these. I think Terry McLaurin signs in the next 72 hours. Generally speaking, preseason will end on Saturday. They'll revisit the big picture stuff. It'll be game week and it'll really be like the game two weeks. Because with now three preseason games, there's more time between the end of preseason and the start of the opener. I just don't believe that a player who has been as consistently productive for Washington when they had no one at quarterback is going to let them have a superstar quarterback on a rookie deal and not get it done with his number one receiver. Do I think Terry McLaurin is as good as A.J. brown? No. But it doesn't matter. He's really, really good. The guy who signs the deal the most recently always gets a little bump because the salary cap goes up. So I will be shocked if Washington takes the field week one and Terry McLaurin isn't there. That one is in the as close to 100% as I can make it. Jaden Daniels just came out and said he thought it was going to get done. This one's going to get done. Next confident would be Trey Hendrickson in Cincinnati. I know it's Cincinnati. I know they're historically cheap, but they got Joe Burrow. They paid him. They have T. Higgins. They paid him. They have Jamar Chase. They paid him. They changed defensive coordinators. They used three of their first four picks on defensive players. Apparently they've agreed on how much money per year and how long the deal is going to be. They haven't agreed to the biggest part of the deal, which is the guaranteed money. Reports are that Trey Hendrickson wants three years guaranteed. Bengals only want to do one year guaranteed. My guess is they settle on about two years guaranteed. Trey Hendrickson has led. He's been what, 17 sacks? Led NFL in sacks last year? Been 17 sacks each of the last two years. Yes, he's 30, but two years of guaranteed money feels like a reasonable place. And I can't imagine looking Joe Burrow in the eye and being like, hey, remember last year when you would score 30 regularly and we would lose? We want you to do that again. My guess is Hendrickson gets done and then that leaves Micah again. I think it works out. I think they get it done. I don't think he's going to be in the business of giving back $1.3 million per year. But at some point, Jerry Jones is going to have to do what apparently Jerry Jones doesn't want to do, which is talk to Micah Parsons legal representation. This is all noise. It's all unnecessary. It's all unbecoming. All but given that we are still in the season where the games don't count, it is fodder. And at least we know for Jerry, not for the 31 other teams. Like I don't think anything about the Terry McLaurin contract is because Washington wants to be in the news cycle. I don't think anything about the Trey Hendrickson contract is because they want to be in the news cycle. But for Dallas, we have a ton of data, including Jerry Jones's own mouth in the Netflix documentary It's a soap opera 365 days a year. Jerry Jones sees value in the drama of dragging this out with Micah Parsons. Coming up next, before Taron Armstead Jackson Dart looks good again, three successful preseason games for Jackson Dart. I think the Giants plan for now is the right one. Can they continue it? It's coming up the Herd Be sure to catch live editions of the Herd, weekdays at noon Eastern, 9am Pacific on Fox Sports Radio. FS1 the iHeartRadio app he's Mike Carmen I'm Dan Byard. We have a fantasy football podcast called I Want yout Flexed.
