\u201cVery, very smart,\u201d executive vice president Stephen Jones told reporters at the Senior Bowl. \u201cGreat communicator, which at the end of the day, one of our top priorities is to be a great teacher.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese defenses are very complicated, but at the same time, he was really good at explaining it not only to coach [Brian] Schottenheimer and to [vice president of player personnel Will McClay], but to Jerry [Jones] and myself that you want to make complicated things seem easy so players can use their athletic ability and play fast and do the things you want them to do, have the identity you want them to have on that side of the ball. He was just outstanding.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 34, Parker is the youngest defensive coordinator the Cowboys have ever had, and he is only 14 seasons removed from his coaching debut as the defensive backs coach at Virginia State.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d be lying if I said I knew he\u2019d be the defensive coordinator of the Cowboys 10 years later or whatever it\u2019s been, but he was obviously a very talented young guy,\u201d said Matt Dawson, who was Virginia State\u2019s defensive coordinator and spent 17 years as an assistant in college football. \u201cHe picked up a defense that he hadn\u2019t been involved in as a player or coach very quickly, was always receptive to me as a coach, always eager to learn, always asking questions. And honestly, he asked the right questions. He didn\u2019t ask questions to ask questions. There was always a reason behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parker was 21 years old at the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe might\u2019ve been one of the youngest guys in the room,\u201d Dawson said. \u201cSome of the guys he coached were probably a little older than him.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Dawson said the players never questioned the age of the coach because of the wisdom he gave them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud of him. And he deserves it,\u201d Dawson said. \u201cCP deserves everything. He\u2019s worked hard and he\u2019s a great person. You can\u2019t put a price on those things. He\u2019s earned everything he\u2019s gotten. Nothing\u2019s been given to him. He worked every step of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cVery, very smart,\u201d executive vice president Stephen Jones told reporters at the Senior Bowl. \u201cGreat communicator, which at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,932,104,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-161310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-cowboys-news","10":"tag-dallas-headlines","11":"tag-dallas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}