Cowboys’ Jerry Jones accused of breaking NFL rule amid Micah Parsons contract negotiations originally appeared on The Sporting News
Jerry Jones has openly shared his side of the Micah Parsons contract negotiations, in which he says he and the Dallas Cowboys’ defensive superstar had more or less agreed to an extension in a conversation between the two of them.
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Only one problem: That’s not how this is supposed to work in the NFL.
Players sign with certified agents to represent them. The collective bargaining agreement sets it up for those agents to be the main touchpoints in any contract talks with a player.
As Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio explains it, the owner is not supposed to directly negotiate with players:
“Jones has repeatedly tried to negotiate contracts directly with players, even when players are represented by certified agents. He does it because the NFL and the NFL Players Association allow him to do it. Jerry has been doing it for years. He makes no bones about it. And with no one ever telling him not to do it, he’s only becoming more brazen.”
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Parsons has said that he didn’t think he was going to speak with Jones earlier this offseason about a contract but rather about leadership.
“He wants to bamboozle a player who may not even realize a negotiation is happening and then print it up and have the agent and the player sign it,” Florio writes. “In Jones’s mind, the agent is a bystander. And that’s baloney. The league should have told him to stop doing it, long ago. The union should have filed a grievance over it, long ago.”
In this case, it also seems not to have worked.
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Parsons seems legitimately bothered that his agent hasn’t been respected during these negotiations.
It led Parsons to scrub any mention of the Cowboys from his social media on Thursday night. With a trade request on the table, the former Penn State star seems to be seriously considering forcing his way out of Dallas.
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Jones hasn’t helped the cause.
“If the NFLPA wants to re-establish credibility with the rank and file, one way to do that would be to stand up to Jones and submit the appropriate paperwork challenging his effort to get Parsons to finalize a contract that his certified agent didn’t negotiate,” Florio writes. “And if the NFL truly cares about the integrity of the game and everything associated with it, the league will tell Jones to stop doing it before the union files — and wins — a grievance regarding his disregard for the Collective Bargaining Agreement.”
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This is a negotiation that just keeps getting more interesting. With Jones involved, don’t expect the intrigue to lessen anytime soon.
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