Cowboys’ Micah Parsons on how he’s officiated: ‘Refs don’t understand the plays I can make with my speed’

FRISCO, Texas —  Across all of professional sports, some athletes are simply officiated differently because their physical gifts are incomparable even amongst their peers. 

This contrast is most noticeable in the NBA where a player like Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal back in his Los Angeles Lakers prime had to be officiated another way. O’Neal’s speed and agility down on the low block in tandem with his size and strength made it impossible for opposing big men to contain him while playing normal low post defense. Simple as that, which meant his defenders needed to resort to a style of defense that, by rule, meant they were fouling him pretty much every time he touched the basketball in the paint. O’Neal’s defenders would get into foul trouble, but they wouldn’t all foul out. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a game to be played. 

That’s a reality Dallas Cowboys two-time First-Team All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons is confronting in his third NFL season. The 24-year-old leads the NFL in quarterback pressures (97), quarterback pressure rate (23%) and pass rush win rate (37.6%). 

“Oh man, it’s distinct, unique, whip out your vocabulary,” Dallas Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said Wednesday when asked to describe Parsons’ speed and abilities. “The speed and his get-off and his ability to split two, he’s the No. 1 pressure player in the National Football League, and he has a tremendous skill set. He’s definitely unique.

While Parsons is clearly on track to become just the fifth defensive player in NFL history to be a first-team All-Pro player in each of his first three seasons, he feels like his impact could be even larger than it already is for the Cowboys’ fifth-ranked scoring defense (19.1 points per game allowed) and that he is being restricted by the way he is officiated. 

“I don’t really say too much, I just keep it rolling bro. It is what it is,” Parsons said Wednesday when asked about fighting to draw more holding calls during games. “I’m not a flop guy, and I’m not a guy that’s going to fake it because I believe I can still make that play. A lot of plays get made above the [play’s initial] 2.3 seconds. At the end of the day, I just have to keep playing through things and these adversities and challenges but I’m just going to keep going forward.”

His 13 sacks are tied for the seventh-most in the NFL this season with Cleveland Browns All-Pro defensive end Myles Garrett, but the underlying pressure metrics indicate Parsons’ number in that category could be considerably higher. He is the only player in the NFL with a pass rush win rate, which occurs when a defender beats his block in under 2.5 seconds, over 30%, 37.6% to be exact. Garrett entered Week 17 in second in the NFL at a 28.4% clip. However, Parsons has only been able to draw three holding penalties in 2023, according to data provided to CBS Sports by Sportradar, which is tied for 24th among NFL defenders entering Week 17. 

The NFL leaders in holding penalties drawn, per Sportradar, are 2023 sacks leader and Pittsburgh Steelers edge rusher T.J. Watt, Las Vegas Raiders Pro Bowl defensive end Maxx Crosby and Denver Broncos defensive lineman Zach Allen with seven. Why is this metric important? Well, if offensive linemen fear the consequence of being called for holding when blocking Parsons, that would open up more room for Parsons to get to opposing quarterbacks cleanly if the people blocking him are less inclined to try and get a fistful of jersey as he bends around the edge or explodes up the middle through the A gap against a center and/or a guard. 

Parsons was clocked at an average pass rush get-off time of 0.57 seconds against the New York Jets in Week 2 this season per the NFL’s NextGen Stats, which marks the fastest of any player in a game over the last two years. He believes his speed at his stature — 6’3, 245 pounds — attributes to officials refereeing him differently than other prolific pass rushers. 

“To be honest – and I mean this in the most humblest way possible – I don’t think there’s another rusher like me in the league,” Parsons said. “I don’t think that there’s a rusher that wins as quick as I do. I don’t think there’s a rusher that does the things that I do, and that’s on tape. I’m pretty sure other rushers can tell you that. I think they put me on the same pedestal as other rushers, and we’re not the same. You can’t compare me to a lot of other rushers at all and how they scheme me versus how they scheme other rushers is not even the same. I don’t think they take that into fact at all. They don’t realize I’m 4.3 [40-yard dash speed] off the edge versus some dudes might be 4.4, 4.5, whatever.”

“Yeah, I definitely think that,” Parsons confirmed when asked if he thinks officials are unintentionally refereeing him differently. “I think the refs understand that I’m a good player, but they don’t understand the actual plays that I can make with my speed and what I can control.”

NFL Pass Rush Leaders & Holding Calls Drawn
2023 Season, Entering Week 17

* Leads NFL

Earlier this season, Parsons said he’s not someone who is trying to “play pat-a-guy” to work the officials by chatting them up during a game in order to receive a more friendly whistle. Ahead of facing the NFC North division champion Detroit Lions in primetime Saturday night in the penultimate game of the 2023 NFL regular season, he is more willing to pull a referee aside to figure out where his opinion and their opinion differs on a given play. 

“Of course, and I look at him and he says, ‘I didn’t see it,'” Parsons said. “And I say, ‘I don’t know what you’re looking at.’ It’s weird because you got two people [referees] back there [behind the line of scrimmage]. You look on this side, you got another person on this side. I don’t know what’s going on. Some of this stuff is so intentional and so vile that I don’t know how you could miss it. Hands to the face, I get called for that, but you know how many times I get hands to the face in a game? It’s just mind-blowing.”

Many players would brush their disagreements about in-game officiating to the side and not go on the record in the vivid way in which Parsons has about this issue. Given the game-changing ability that getting into a quarterback’s face can have, he feels like what he is going through as the league’s best at this element of the game of football that it’s his responsibility to advocate not only for himself but other pass rushers around the league. 

“Maybe,” Parsons said when asked if his willingness to be vocal about officials regarding his pass rushing could have an effect on the amount of calls he gets. “I definitely think there’s a lot of biased things going on around the league, who they want to call things on and how they call it or when they call it. It’s been very biased. When you look at all of the games across the league – not just the Cowboys – it’s very shown of what they’re willing to call and what they’re not willing to call. You know?”

The NFL rulebook changes don’t occur in-season, but Parsons would like to see a few changes made as far as teams’ ability to challenge holding, roughing the passer and other key penalties ahead of the 2024 season.

“I think they [the league] should just have a long conversation on that this offseason,” Parsons said. “I think it’s definitely something they should look at. The film is out there, so it’s not like it’s not something they can go and look at it. The games are recorded. I’m pretty sure every team sends it in. It’s definitely something to look at. I also think all of these plays should be replayable. I think they should be challenged. People don’t realize that some of these flags are game-changing plays.” 

Parsons was called for a roughing the passer penalty on a play in which he and teammate DeMarcus Lawrence sandwiched Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa with just under 30 seconds left in the first half, a play in which he thought was clean. The very next play, Tagovailoa threw a four-yard touchdown pass to give Miami a 13-7 halftime lead in a game the Cowboys would go on to lose at the buzzer 22-20 on a walk-off field goal in Week 16.   

“They are continuing drives on things that shouldn’t be called,” Parsons said. “It’s been back-to-back weeks where there’s been touchdowns off roughing the passer [calls] against us. [Calls] that continue drives that led to points or unnecessary roughness on receivers – whatever the thing is. They should be able to challenge. The same way they review to see if it is a play, they should review to see if it’s a flag on the play. I definitely think there’s some things that should be pulled to light during the offseason.”

An offensive player blocking Parsons hasn’t been flagged for a holding penalty on the All-Pro since the Cowboys 20-17 win on “Monday Night Football” at the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 6, a streak of 38 quarters he hopes will end Saturday night. 

“It’s been long, you know? I can say I’ve been to the quarterback quite a lot in that time,” Parsons said. “It’s definitely frustrating sometimes, but at the end of the day I know it comes with the territory. I always say it is an offensive league, they want to keep as many points on the board as possible and keep drives alive as much as possible. So it is what it is but at the end of the day you still got to play.”

As long as Parsons continues to go play, his head coach has no issues with the heartbeat of his defense being honest about what he experiences on the field. 

“I don’t see a young man worried about it in his preparation,” McCarthy said Tuesday when asked about Parsons’ officiating remarks of the course of the season. “He’s competing during the game. I think these conversations that happen after the fact, I think that’s more of a product of today’s industry. I don’t see it as an issue. Everyone wants an honest answer, and I think the fact our players and coaches, they do a very good job of engaging and doing the best they can with their responses.”

This week, Parsons has to go play against Pro Football Focus’ highest-graded offensive tackle in Lions left tackle Penei Sewell (92.5 offensive grade), a top-ten graded offensive guard in Detroit right guard Graham Glasgow (81.5 PFF offensive grade, eighth-best in NFL among guards) and PFF’s highest-graded center in the Lions’ Frank Ragnow (89.0 offensive grade). Get the popcorn ready. 

“The same that goes for every offensive line I go against, I’m coming,” Parsons said. “I’ll see you Saturday. It’s going to be a great matchup. I’m always looking forward to a top matchup. The same way I did with [Philadelphia Eagles All-Pro right tackle] Lane [Johnson]. It’ll be the same thing with Penei [Sewell] and whoever else I went against this year. It’s always fun and more challenging, but it’s good-on-good. You always get better from it.”