Will the Cowboys still be able to rush the passer after dealing Micah Parsons?

Before trading Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers, edge was probably the deepest position on the Dallas Cowboys’ roster. 

Not only did they have a superstar who is arguably the best pass rusher in the entire NFL, they also had Dante Fowler Jr., who racked up double-digit sacks last year in Washington; their second-round picks from three of the last four years in Donovan Ezeiruaku, Marshawn Kneeland and Sam Williams; and offseason acquisition James Houston, who had eight sacks as a rookie before struggling over the last two years.

Without Parsons, things should obviously be expected to change quite a bit. Everyone is going to get moved up a rung or two in the pecking order, and be expected to play a role they weren’t ticketed for as recently as last week. 

Instead of being a complementary player, Fowler is now arguably the top target of opposing offensive lines. Rather than primarily being counted on for run defense, Kneeland is going to have to bring some pass-rush juice. Rather than easing into the lineup as a designated pass rusher before gradually taking on a larger workload, Ezeiruaku is going to have to be a major piece of the puzzle right away. Rather than merely being a wild card with high-level talent, Williams is going to be counted on to produce. And rather than being an end-of-roster curiosity, Houston is going to be a piece of the rotation as well. 

Fowler had a solid 14.3% pressure rate last year in Washington, per Tru Media, and he was at an even better 17.9% during the prior two seasons in Dallas. He won’t be rushing alongside Parsons anymore, but he at least showed last year that he can maintain pretty good pass-rush productivity even without an elite edge opposite him on the line.

The other guys are bigger question marks. Kneeland didn’t record a sack and had just an 8.5% pressure rate during his rookie season, albeit while playing six of his 11 games after coming back from an injury. Williams missed the entire 2024 season with an injury of his own, and his 13.4% pressure rate across the prior two seasons is more the mark of a complementary rushman who can capitalize on the presence of a guy like Parsons. The Cowboys will need those two guys to take pretty significant steps forward this year. 

The wild cards are Ezeiruaku and Houston, for different reasons.

Ezeiruaku led the ACC in sacks last year at Boston College, racking up 16.5 takedowns (along with 21 tackles for loss). He’s very slight, even more so than Parsons, but his bend and his speed are elite. He’s probably still going to be a situational rusher to start off, but the Cowboys need to get into pure-pass situations to get him on the field, and that’s obviously more difficult without Parsons in the mix — no matter what you think of how or whether Kenny Clark will help their run defense. Houston was electric as a rookie in Detroit but basically disappeared there and in Cleveland over the last two years. Can the Cowboys unlock anything in him, or was he just a flash in the pan type?

The Cowboys are going to need to get help from their interior defensive linemen in this department, but the issue there is that the only strong interior pass rusher they have is Osa Odighizuwa. He’s quite good in that department (he had 12.3% pressure rate working from the inside last year), but he can’t do it alone. Neither Clark nor 2023 first-rounder Mazi Smith brings much pass-rush juice, and after that they’re counting on guys like Solomon Thomas and Perrion Winfrey, plus seventh-round pick Jay Toai, who is a big-bodied nose tackle ticketed to be a run-stopper in the future.

One way to generate more pass rush is by blitzing, but new defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus runs a system that sends blitzes at a below-average rate. During his three years in Chicago, the Bears blitzed at only the 23rd-highest rate in the NFL, and during his his four-year stint as the Colts’ defensive coordinator, they blitzed at the third-lowest rate in the league. So the idea that the Cowboys are going to send extra rushers to make up for Parsons’ absence doesn’t really pass the smell test. 

And the thing is, the Cowboys really need their pass rush to be elite. Even after adding Clark, they’re likely to be a below-average run defense. And they have a ton of injury issues (Trevon Diggs and rookie Shavon Revel) at cornerback, where they’re also expected to start Bills cast-off Kaiir Elam on the outside opposite DaRon Bland until Diggs returns and Bland likely kicks inside to the slot. The pass rush was one of the things that was going to cover up for the question marks on the back end. Now there’s a question of whether that will even happen. 

There are plenty of reasons to question the Parsons trade, and what will happen to a pass rush that was among the best in the NFL whenever Parsons was on the field is certainly one of them.