Derek Stingley Jr.'s deal may be a red flag for Cowboys’ extension negotiations with Micah Parsons

The waiting game has bitten the Dallas Cowboys again — twice in 24 hours.

With the Cincinnati Bengals making wideout Ja'Marr Chase the new highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL on Sunday, conventional wisdom suggested the target for Dallas Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons had finally been dialed in.

Led by a sequential set of events along the lines of: Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett piercing the $40 million per season mark for non-quarterbacks on March 9; Chase raised the bar to $40.25 million on Sunday; now Parsons is on deck to surpass both with an extension that pays him more than Chase’s average.

Seemingly the only question that remains is how much more can Parsons command?

On Monday, the three-year, $90 million extension signed by Houston Texans cornerback Derek Stingley Jr. made that answer murky.

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While Stingley’s deal didn’t come close to Chase’s financial perch among non-quarterbacks, it completely reset the top end of the cornerback market by a whopping 20 percent, bumping the per-season average of the highest paid corner in the league from the $25 million of the Carolina Panthers’ Jaycee Horn to the $30 million of Stingley.

Here's why this is potentially important to the Cowboys' extension talks with Parsons: the Dallas defensive star shares the same agent as Stingley — David Mulugheta of Athletes First. And now Mulugheta has illustrated his negotiation stance is not necessarily bound by the “one dollar more” ideology of beating a previous contract by a narrow margin. In the case of Stingley, the extension settled on what he could command and where the top of cornerback market should have been.

That could set the stage for a tougher-than-anticipated negotiation between Parsons and the Cowboys, given that Mulugheta could argue Parsons is both a younger and more versatile defensive player than Garrett, and thus should command a premium over the salary of the Browns defensive end. As it stands, the Cowboys have already cost themselves significantly by not pushing to get Parsons into an extension last offseason, when making him the highest paid non-quarterback in the league would have meant signing him to a deal that exceeded the $35 million-per season of Minnesota Vikings wideout Justin Jefferson. Since Jefferson signed that deal, three others have moved that annual salary figure up dramatically — from Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby’s $35.5 million to Garrett’s $40 million to Chase’s $40.25 million.

In an interesting twist, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has now waited so long to do an extension with Parsons that he may have exhausted the field of players who could once again reset the non-quarterback market. The two likeliest candidates are the Pittsburgh Steelers’ T.J. Watt, who turns 31 in October and is set to be a free agent after next season, and the Detroit Lions’ Aidan Hutchinson, whose first extension window opens next offseason but is coming off a season-ending injury in 2024.

However the Cowboys assess that market — and whatever the aim of Parsons and his reps — it sets an interesting stage for talks over the next few months. Historically, Dallas has been slow to get record-setting deals in the books, so this could easily linger into training camp, potentially setting up the possibility for Watt to get a short-term extension done in the meantime. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Parsons and Mulugheta wait for a Watt deal to land, too, eliminating the possibility of Parsons resetting the table for the Steelers pass rusher.

That’s a lot of variables with really only one bit of clarity: The Parsons extension has gotten more pricey with time, and just like last offseason, that’s not going to change moving forward.