Micah Parsons and T.J. Watt are locked in contract standoffs that feel eerily familiar — and one of last year's biggest contract sagas may reveal how it ends
The game within the game is afoot. As a result, Micah Parsons and T.J. Watt are likely ready to play the long game this summer. The 2025 offseason has seen several supersized market reset contracts that have pushed the spending ceiling higher than ever before for elite talents. It's a never-ending cycle that resets on an annual basis — […]
The game within the game is afoot. As a result, Micah Parsons and T.J. Watt are likely ready to play the long game this summer.
The 2025 offseason has seen several supersized market reset contracts that have pushed the spending ceiling higher than ever before for elite talents. It's a never-ending cycle that resets on an annual basis — but this year's drama at one particular position is echoing last year's star-studded standoff at quarterback.
The position group arguably most in the spotlight this season has been the edge rusher position. We've already seen Maxx Crosby briefly seize the title of highest-paid non-quarterback in the league ($35.5 million per season), only to see fellow superstar Myles Garrett top him by nearly $5 million per season on average ($40 million). Texans pass rusher Danielle Hunter would go on to later fill in the space between the two, slotting just over Crosby's figure at $35.6 million per season.
And that's before you get to Cincinnati's Trey Hendrickson, Pittsburgh's T.J. Watt and Dallas' Micah Parsons. The standoff in Cincinnati is unique to, well, Cincinnati. The dynamics there are difficult to compare to the rest of the league — although some promising updates about the two parties seemed to trickle out at the end of last week about renewed talks on an extension Hendrickson is desperate to sign.
Watt and Parsons? Both may be waiting for the other to sign first. How does this all play out? When you compare where we currently sit in the edge group to the 2024 quarterback extension race, the parallels are striking.
The 2024 quarterback extension race
Last year's quarterback extension group included Trevor Lawrence, Jared Goff, Tua Tagovailoa, Jordan Love, and Dak Prescott.
Goff was the first to sign his extension, inking a four-year, $212 million extension in May shortly after the NFL Draft. In June, it was Trevor Lawrence's turn. Lawrence's deal surprised some, as he landed on a $55 million per year average to tie the then-NFL record for highest paid player on an annual average salary basis.
After Lawrence came a long, grueling wait.
Tagovailoa was the next to agree to terms, although the contracts done for both him and Jordan Love with Green Bay happened in rapid succession. Both quarterbacks are represented by Athlete's First — which certainly didn't hurt either player's chances of maximizing their value. Once one shoe fell, the other followed suit quickly. Tagovailoa's deal incrementally topped Jared Goff's, whereas Jordan Love pulled into a tie with Lawrence at that magic number of $55 million per season but came with a then-record signing bonus.
Both deals happened within the first week on training camp, spurred on by a hold-in by Tagovailoa in Miami. I, for the record, also would have quickly moved to sign the deal if I had been faced with watching Mike White and Skylar Thompson run another practice!
The last man standing in the staring contest? Dak Prescott. Prescott and his agent, Todd France of CAA (Creative Artists Agency), managed to take the Dallas Cowboys the distance and with everyone else's chips on the table, France took the Cowboys to the woodshed. Prescott inked a four-year, $240 million extension that crushed the annual average salary record by $5 million and boasted an NFL record $80 million signing bonus.
The most impressive number out of Prescott's contract was the $231 million in practical guarantees on his contract. The scar tissue the NFL carries from seeing how poorly Deshaun Watson's fully-guaranteed contract has aged is very real. For France to get Dallas to make that kind of guarantee commitment is a testament to just how much leverage Prescott held over the Cowboys.
Patience, as it turns out, really is a virtue.
The 2025 EDGE rusher landscape
Which is why fans shouldn't be surprised to see the Watt and Parsons' standoffs linger throughout the summer.
We've already seen a number of parallels in how this year's edge market has unfolded versus last year's quarterbacks. Crosby (Goff) signed early, Garrett (Lawrence) came over the top with a new reset, and Hunter (Tagovailoa) incrementally topped Crosby.
The Jordan Love (market reset) and Dak Prescott (blow the roof off) deals await T.J. Watt in Pittsburgh and Micah Parsons in (wait for it…) Dallas. Another fun wrinkle for these two star defenders? Their agencies are the same two that were the last ones standing in last year's quarterback stare down. Parsons, mercifully, is not represented by CAA — the poetry of the same agency taking the Cowboys a full 12 rounds in a marathon only to get everything they could have asked two years in a row wouldn't even be believable in a movie script.
Parsons is represented by David Mulugheta of Athletes First — who is the hottest agent in the game and always gets his price. Mulugheta also represents Jordan Love, who landed the penultimate deal for the quarterback extensions last year. So don't feel sorry for Parsons.
CAA is at the table in this conversation via T.J. Watt, though. The Steelers, in a bid to salvage whatever negotiating leverage and potential cost they hope to save, should be mindful of how waiting played out last year for the Cowboys. Will CAA insist on being the last ones to eat one again this year? Or will they be more willing to take the next deal on account of Watt's age (he'll be 31 in October) versus Parsons, who is playing on the fifth-year option of his rookie contract and has more elite football ahead of him?
Who Blinks First?
The playbook is playing out before our very eyes once again, mirroring the dominoes of 2024's quarterback extension market. It will be fascinating to see how both Athletes First and CAA handle representing the "opposite" client this time around, with Mulugheta now representing the star who is staring down The Star.
Both players, Watt and Parsons, have a legitimate argument to top Garrett's $40 million annual average. They could also very easily set their eyes on the title of highest paid non-quarterback, which now belongs to WR Ja'Marr Chase after the Bengals finally, mercifully, got that deal done this offseason after enduring a Hendrickson-like standoff with Cincinnati last summer. Chase's contract pays an annual average of $40.25 million per season.
Everyone knows that waiting only costs you more money. But the challenge for teams trying to avoid waiting is that negotiations aren't simply in a vacuum between a player and a team. What is happening for other relevant parties across the league influences the ask. More often than not, those representing the players want as many other deals to be done in order to have as much leverage as possible in the game within the game.
And now, with the edge rusher extension group so close to the finish line, both Parsons & Athletes First and Watt & CAA likely wouldn't mind being the last one to blink. For Pittsburgh and Dallas, avoiding being last at this point likely means conceding all the wrinkles on the negotiating table anyway. It's a tough spot to be — and unsurprising that the same agencies that cashed in by outlasting the field are once again the last ones standing.
