Every year, after the NFL draft, everyone is talking about “steals” and “reaches.” The “steals” are the players that the football-watching public thinks went way later than their talent warranted. And the “reaches” are the players we thought went way higher than they should’ve.

It turns out: we’re only half right.

A 2021 study by Timo Riske of Pro Football Focus looked back at six years of draft data and identified the players who went significantly higher or lower than the consensus of publicly available draft rankings. What he found is that the players who were “reaches” did underperform, on average, compared to the other players drafted at the same pick in other years. But the players who were “steals”? They didn’t perform any better than we’d expect, based on their draft position.

The elegance of this study comes in the rationality of its explanation. For a player to be a true “reach,” only one team has to make a player-evaluation mistake. For a player to be a true “steal,” almost the entire NFL has to make a player-evaluation mistake, and NFL teams have access to way more information than the general public does.

I bring this up because I think a similar heuristic might apply to the soccer transfer market. It’s very easy for one club to lock onto a player and pay way more than any other would have ever considered. It’s much harder for every club with the requisite budget to undervalue the same talented player. This is why there’s a common refrain among data-based thinkers in the soccer world: Hire me just so I can tell you “no” a couple times a year, and I’ll be worth it.

So, with the transfer window now closed across Europe’s top leagues, what moves look like the biggest reaches? Who might’ve benefitted from someone on staff saying “no”? Here are the top 13 most questionable transfers of this summer window.

– The best worst transfers: Why Sancho, Werner were good moves
– Striker domino effect: How Premier League clubs net out
– Men’s transfer grades: What moves mean across Europe

13. Martín Zubimendi, defensive midfielder, Real Sociedad to Arsenal

-Age: 26
-Fee: €70 million
-Market value (per Transfermarkt): €60 million
-Projected negative differential between fee and value in a year: 16.7%

Last summer, I wrote about a simple transfer projection system that NFL analyst Kevin Cole helped me create. And we’re using that same system to come up with these rankings. Here’s an excerpt:

To varying degrees, a lower age, a lower transfer fee, and a higher market value at the time of the transfer made it more likely there was an increase in value after a year. Then, we can take those factors and create a formula to predict an increase or decrease in value for any big transfer.

In other words: a year from now, is a player’s market value likely to be higher or lower than their transfer fee, and by how much?

This is a basic analysis, and it doesn’t account for the extra costs of player wages, which can vary significantly. Plus, we’re using estimated numbers from Transfermarkt to come up with the market values and the fees, which often contain add-ons.

However, studies have found that Transfermarkt values tend to be pretty close to true player value on average, and it also lets us harness the power of the wisdom of the crowds: The market values on the site are a pretty good representation of what the world thinks of a player. At least based on our analysis, when teams have paid significantly more than the Transfermarkt value for a player, those moves have tended to not work out.

Fitting with what I said earlier: When I looked at last summer’s 30 most expensive transfers, the system was much better at projecting the misses than it was nailing the hits. Among the players projected to see a less than 1% increase in value, I’d say one of the 12 (Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest) was a true success. Three of the players, João Palhinha, João Félix, and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall are already playing for new teams.

Arsenal’s transfer approach this summer was seemingly designed to rate poorly in these projections: They want to win now and don’t seem to care much about how things might look down the road. The Gunners have signed three players age 26 or older for €65 million or more.

12. Gerson, central midfielder, Flamengo to Zenit Saint Petersburg

-Age: 28
-Fee: €25 million
-Market value: €25 million
-Projected negative differential: 17%

There are two Zenit players on Carlo Ancelotti’s most recent Brazil roster. And neither of them are named “Gerson.”

11. Luis Díaz, winger, Liverpool to Bayern Munich

-Age: 28
-Fee: €70 million
-Market value: €70 million
-Projected negative differential: 17%

Diaz was fantastic for Liverpool last season, but there are only three 28-year-olds who required a higher transfer fee than what Bayern Munich paid to acquire him:

-Eden Hazard: €120.8 million, Chelsea to Real Madrid
-Antoine Griezmann: €120 million, Atletico Madrid to Barcelona
-Romelu Lukaku: €113 million, Inter Milan to Chelsea
-Gonzalo Higuain: €90 million, Napoli to Juventus

Hazard might be the worst transfer of all time, Lukaku lasted one season at Chelsea, and Griezmann and Higuain made it two full years with Barcelona and Juventus, respectively, before moving elsewhere. All of these players were held in similar — if not higher — esteem to Diaz at the time of their moves. For as good as Diaz has looked to start the season, history is not on Bayern’s side with this one.

10. Kingsley Coman, winger, Bayern Munich to Al-Nassr

-Age: 29
-Fee: €25 million
-Market value: €30 million
-Projected negative differential: 17.3%

The Saudi Pro League isn’t operating on the same economic terms as the rest of the soccer world. They’re not constrained by Profit and Sustainability Rules, UEFA regulations, or even more universal concerns like “budgets,” “profits,” and “the value of money.” They’re also typically paying such inflated salaries to players that looking at only the transfer fees tells an even smaller part of the story than it usually does.

But just for fun, I wanted to see if any of the deals they’ve made this summer actually project well based on our simple model. And one of them actually does. While it seemed as if Enzo Millot was headed to Atletico Madrid, Al Ahli swooped in and nabbed the 23-year-old attacking midfielder from Stuttgart for €30 million. Transfermarkt put his market value at €35 million, and a year from now that number projects to be 17.5% higher than the fee Al Ahli paid. That would make Millot the 24th “best” transfer of the summer.

9. Matheus Cunha, attacking midfielder, Wolverhampton to Manchester United

-Age: 26
-Fee: €74.2 million
-Market value: €60 million
-Projected negative differential: 21.02%

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Did Manchester United overpay for Cunha?

The “ESPN FC” crew discuss their thoughts on Matheus Cunha joining Manchester United for 62.5 million pounds.

We’ll dig in here when we get to another Man United signing on this list. Can you guess who?

8. Alexander Isak, forward, Newcastle to Liverpool

-Age: 25
-Fee: €140 million
-Market value: €120 million
-Projected negative differential: 26%

This nicely encapsulates the upside and downside of spending more money on a transfer fee than any club not owned by the nation of Qatar ever has.

It’s pretty much impossible for Isak to give Liverpool more than they’ve invested in acquiring him. If he wins the Ballon d’Or, then maybe you could say that. But basically, Isak has to be one of the 10 or 15 best players in the world — immediately and then for many more years after that for this deal to “break even” in any kind of value sense.

Unlike the club’s two other major moves for youngsters Hugo Ekitike and Florian Wirtz, Isak is 25, already in his prime. He turns 26 next month. This is it.

Plus, well, I’m not convinced that Isak is in that absolute top tier of elite talent. He has never scored 20 non-penalty goals in a season. Heck, he has hit double digits only three times. And he played fewer than two-thirds of the available Premier League minutes in his three years with Newcastle. The overwhelmingly likely outcome is that Isak nets out somewhere below “€140 million player” when all is said and done.

But barring injury, which is a concern, given Isak’s lack of ability, there’s probably quite a high floor here, too.

Sure, the model projects Isak’s crowd-sourced value to be 26% lower, come this time next year, than that €140 million fee Liverpool paid. But even with that decline, Liverpool would still have a starting striker valued at somewhere around €104 million.

7. Bryan Mbeumo, winger, Brentford to Manchester United

-Age: 25
-Fee: €75 million
-Market value: €55 million
-Projected negative differential: 21.6%

OK, now we can talk about Cunha and Mbeumo together. I’ve already written a bunch about these moves and why I didn’t like them — and the first couple of games already started to prove this out.

Manchester United paid a lot of money for two players who outperformed their expected-goals numbers by massive amounts and by much more than they’d ever done before. It was incredibly unlikely that both players, let alone one of them, would continue to convert their chances at such high rates. Through the games against Fulham and Arsenal, they’ve combined for 12 shots worth 1.21 xG and zero goals:

Even without the goals, I think Mbeumo and Cunha have still made Manchester United better. They were quite competitive at home against Arsenal, and then they played Fulham even on the road. But that’s the thing: These were two already-in-their-prime, competent Premier League players with no real chance of ever becoming stars. They were going to improve Manchester United in the short term because Manchester United finished last season in 15th place.

Now, they look as if they’re about as good as Fulham. That would be a 12-point improvement on last season. And it would still only get them up to 11th place in the table.

6. Luis Suárez, forward, Almeria to Sporting Lisbon

-Age: 27
-Fee: €22.2 million
-Market value: €8 million
-Projected negative differential: 26.82%

I, uh, yeah: This one beats me! Sporting replaced Viktor Gyokeres with the 27-year-old not-that-Luis Suarez on a five-year contract. The fee makes him the third-most expensive player the club has ever acquired, after Manuel Ugarte and Gyokeres. Given that both of those players eventually moved for big fees to bigger clubs, maybe I shouldn’t be doubting them. But it sure seems as if they think they can do the Gyokeres thing again.

They signed Gyokeres at 25, after he’d washed out at Brighton and played well in the Championship. He dominated the Portuguese league and then moved to Arsenal this summer. With Suarez, they signed him at 27, after he scored 19 non-penalty goals and added eight assists in Spain. But not in LaLiga — this was in the second division.

Before that, he’d played four first-division seasons mostly in Spain but with a half-season in France, and he’d scored 25 goals and added 10 assists — total.

5. Eberechi Eze, attacking midfielder, Crystal Palace to Arsenal

-Age: 27
-Fee: €69.3 million
-Market value: €55 million
-Projected negative differential: 26.93%

On paper, this deal projects poorly, but I want to step away from age curves and algorithms for a second. I hope this move works out. Eze grew up rooting for Arsenal, played for them at early youth levels, but was released when he was 13. Then he bounced around the lower levels of England for a while, made his pro debut with Wycombe in League Two, spent a few years with Queens Park Rangers in the Championship, and eventually signed with Palace in 2020.

Now, 14 years later, he’s back at the club that gave up on him, trying to help them win their first major title since he was 6 years old. He worked his butt off and finally got to where he has always wanted to be. This video, I mean, c’mon:

It was only ever Arsenal.

A boyhood Gooner, our new number 10 – welcome home, Ebere ❤️ pic.twitter.com/k3h67d4rg7

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) August 23, 2025

As I mentioned earlier, Arsenal are trying to win now. Their net spend on transfer fees this summer is €285.5 million, way higher than any other club in the world. And they’re pushing the majority of their resources toward players who are already well into their primes, as opposed to what they’d done in the past: targeting players who would spend all their best years at the club. That’s a massive risk.

And I think that’s especially true with this deal. It makes Eze the third-most expensive 27-year-old ever: behind Luis Suarez (Liverpool to Barcelona) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Inter Milan to Barcelona) and ahead of Kaka (AC Milan to Real Madrid), Riyad Mahrez (Leicester City to Manchester City), and Ángel Di María (Manchester United to PSG).

The hit rate with those moves is mixed, and those players were all established, title-winning superstars. We still haven’t seen Eze play at that level yet.

There’s still a chance, though, that it all works out.

4. Mateo Retegui, forward, Atalanta to Al Qadsiah

-Age: 26
-Fee: €68.25 million
-Market value: €45 million
-Projected negative differential: 30.98%

Before last season, his first with Atalanta, Retegui had never scored more than 13 non-penalty goals in a season — in any professional league, in any country — and he’d never generated more than two assists. This was a goal-scoring striker who didn’t really score many goals.

Plug him into Gianpiero Gasperini’s system for a season, though, and you get 21 non-penalty goals and eight assists. He joined from Genoa for €20.9 million. A year later, he’s leaving for more than triple that fee.

A quick word of warning to the rest of the world: the fee paid for Retegui is the second-biggest Atalanta has ever received. Right behind him: Teen Koopmeiners, who had three goals and three assists for Juventus last season. And right ahead of him: Rasmus Højlund, who is already on his way out at Manchester United.

3. Yoane Wissa, forward, Brentford to Newcastle

-Age: 28
-Fee: €57.7 million
-Market value: €32 million
-Projected negative differential: 45.27%

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Hutchison slams Isak and Wissa’s ‘lack of professionalism’

Don Hutchison discusses Alexander Isak and Yoane Wissa’s lack of professionalism by refusing to play and train for their respective clubs when trying to move clubs.

This feels like a good example of why (A) you don’t let your best player leave on the last day of the window, and (B) you don’t pay for past performance.

The whole Isak saga felt pretty pointless in the end. If Newcastle had just made the move two months ago, then they would’ve had … [does math] … two months to figure out how best to replace him.

Granted, they did try to find his replacements earlier this summer — and kept failing. But I’m not sure how you can look at this move, and then one at the top (bottom?) of this list and not see a team that’s suddenly realizing the season’s already started, the Champions League is coming, and they might have no one to play striker.

Wissa has been one of the most underrated players in the Premier League for the past couple of seasons, but last season he hit a new level: 0.71 non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes, after averaging just slightly over 0.5 in the three previous seasons. If Wissa were 23 or 24, you could make a pretty good case that he’d “made the leap,” that this was his new expected level of play. But Wissa turns 29 this week.

The way more likely explanation is that he just had the best season of his life, and it’s probably not going to happen again.

2. Son Heung-Min, winger, Tottenham to LAFC

-Age: 33
-Fee: €22 million
-Market value: €20 million
-Projected negative differential: 48.2%

This is the highest transfer fee ever paid by an MLS club, and it’s the third-highest fee ever paid by any club for a player 33 or older. Only Cristiano Ronaldo‘s €117 million move to Juventus from Real Madrid and Robert Lewandowski‘s €45 million move to Barcelona from Bayern Munich cost more. Both of those players scored a ton of goals for their new clubs, and I’d suspect Son will do the same, in a much less competitive environment.

The move makes sense for LAFC, a club in MLS, a league that tends to sign players before retirement. For just about any other team in the world, though, it wouldn’t make any sense.

1. Nick Woltemade, forward, Stuttgart to Newcastle

-Age: 23
-Fee: €85 million
-Market value: €30 million
-Projected negative differential: 48.5%

Let’s say there was this really tall striker with great feet for a player his size. In his first professional season, he was playing on loan in the third division in Germany, and he was … fine. As a 20-year-old, he played a little over 2,000 minutes and scored nine non-penalty goals. A 19-year-old scored the same number of goals in the same league. Another 20-year-old scored three more.

The following season, this tall striker played about 1,200 minutes in the Bundesliga. Given that he was making a two-tier jump, he did about how you might expect: two goals across 12 starts. Then, in his third year as a full-time pro, he finally seemed as if he’d begun to develop. He started half of his team’s matches and scored 10 non-penalty goals.

This is also the player that Newcastle United have decided to invest more than half of the Alexander Isak money into.

There’s no more to the story — those were Woltemade’s last three seasons. Across his 29 starts in the Bundesliga, he has scored 12 goals. He has never played more than 1,700 minutes in a first-division season. And at 23, his peak years aren’t even that far away.

Could Woltemade develop into a star striker who lives up to the club-record fee? Absolutely — but that’s also the absolute best-case scenario. Given his incredibly limited track record, Woltemade could just as easily be out of the Premier League in a year or two.

It seems as if it has been a successful summer for the U.S. men’s national team.

Well, not on the field and definitely not off the field either, but what I mean is this: Two of the biggest questions hanging over the team for the past two seasons were: Will Gio Reyna ever play professional soccer again? And will Matt Turner ever play professional soccer again?

At long last, the USMNT’s presumptive starting goalkeeper and theoretical starting attacking midfielder have clear paths toward playing time after both players finally and permanently switched clubs this summer. While we probably do read a little too much into how club situations impact national team performance, these were the two moves most directly connected with the state of the USMNT. Such is the talent of both players that they really just needed to play — somewhere — to reassert their status within the national team.

At least, that’s what we thought. After the announcement of coach Mauricio Pochettino’s latest roster, which contains a nearly even split between MLS- and Europe-based players, it’s difficult to understand what actually raises your profile in the eyes of the former Tottenham manager. Less than a year out from the World Cup, only a handful of players seem to be locks — not just to start next summer, but to even make the roster.

Rather than putting a bowl of lemons on my desk and trying to put myself in Pochettino’s head, though, I’m going to try to assess the state of transfer movement among the USMNT in the same way I did last summer: by grading all of the major moves based on two factors — what they mean for a given player’s professional career and what they mean for the future of the USMNT.

(Players are listed in order of their estimated transfer values on the site Transfermarkt. All transfer data is also via Transfermarkt.)

– Transfer window winners and losers: Which clubs improved?
– Men’s transfer grades: What moves mean across Europe
– NWSL transfer grades: USWNT moves and a record fee

Real Betis to Atletico Madrid, €24 million
Grade: A

What it means for the player: It’s really kind of amazing that this move happened, and no one really seems to care all that much. Atletico Madrid are one of the best teams in the world. They lost to Real Madrid on penalties in the Champions League last season. Their coach is Diego Simeone, one of the best managers on the planet. The team hasn’t finished outside of the top four in LaLiga since 2012, and it has won two league titles over that stretch.

Outside of Christian Pulisic‘s move to Chelsea and maybe Weston McKennie‘s transfer to Juventus, this is the biggest move ever made by an American soccer player. Atletico Madrid pay competitive wages with just about any other club in the world, and is competitive in one of the two most competitive leagues in the world, year after year. And the team signed Cardoso to be one of its starting midfielders at only 23 years old.

Atletico have been bad to start this season, but Cardoso has started all three matches. We’ll see if he’s actually capable of playing for a team with Atletico’s ambitions over the long run — he has been steady, not spectacular, so far in his career — but he’s presumably getting paid a lot of money and he’s pushing his athletic ability as far as he can. Those two things are the whole point of playing professional soccer.

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Gomez: Johnny Cardoso to Atletico Madrid is career-changing

Herculez Gomez reacts to Johnny Cardoso’s move to Atletico Madrid after the USMNT midfielder completes the transfer for a reported fee of €30M

What it means for the USMNT: It might not … mean anything? Despite being on the Gold Cup roster, Cardoso barely played. Some of that was injury, but a bigger part of it was poor play in the friendlies leading up to the tournament. And if Cardoso couldn’t get on the field for what seemed like it was the USMNT’s B-minus or C team this past summer, then why would he stand a chance when the player pool is at full strength?

At the same time, can Pochettino really ignore Cardoso if he’s playing for Atletico every week? I know he hasn’t played all that well in friendlies, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of player you write off after a couple of exhibition matches. When a guy is playing for Atletico Madrid every week and he’s also behind multiple MLS players on the USMNT depth chart, someone is making a massive player-identification error.

PSV to Bayer Leverkusen, €35 million
Grade: B

What it means for the player: This just feels right. Although he never played a huge minutes load in either of his two seasons with PSV, Tillman was incredibly productive whenever he did play during the club’s back-to-back title runs.

The question for any attack-minded player in the Eredivisie is: Can he do it once the space disappears and the defenders actually start defending? And it’s especially true for a player in Tillman’s position. He’s not a winger, but he’s also not a true attacking midfielder, or a true central midfielder: He’s a floating, off-ball-running 8.5 or something. These are the kinds of roles that can exist on a dominant team in the Dutch league, but there tend to be more demanding constraints once you move to one of Europe’s Big Five leagues.

But the Bundesliga is the most similar of the Big Five to the Netherlands, so it makes sense from a stylistic progression. Leverkusen has been a top-10-to-15 team in the world over the past two seasons, and Tillman is essentially replacing Florian Wirtz, who moved to Liverpool for €125 million over the summer.

That said, the club just fired manager Erik ten Hag after three matches. There’s suddenly a lot more uncertainty around this move than there was a couple of weeks ago.

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USMNT’s Tillman admits ‘mixed feelings’ over swapping PSV for Leverkusen

USMNT midfielder Malik Tillman talks to ESPN after confirming his switch from PSV to Bundesliga side Bayer Leverkusen.

What it means for the USMNT: Unlike at PSV, there’s now a world where Tillman falls out of favor and doesn’t get on the field all that much this season. That was true before Ten Hag was sacked, and it’s even more true with whoever replaces him. But still, he was the team’s most expensive transfer ever, so he should get quite a long leash. If he doesn’t play after the club invested so much into his arrival, that’ll say more about Tillman’s actual quality as a player than anything.

Milan to Atalanta, €4 million (loan)
Grade: B-

What it means for the player: He’d arrived in Milan when Billy Beane & Co. were calling the shots, but they’re not there anymore, and the club is all over the place. Milan are signing undervalued young players, overvalued old players, and everyone in between. They’re also on their third coach since the start of last season, and the uber-conservative Max Allegri doesn’t seem like a great fit for a player such as Musah, who’s at his best when he’s able to take risks in the midfield. Getting out of Milan is probably a good thing.

The Atalanta situation is a little murkier than it has been in the past; Gian Piero Gasperini left for Roma in the offseason after nine years in charge. He has been replaced by Ivan Juric, who was fired by Roma less than one season into the job and then took over midway through Southampton’s doomed last-place Premier League campaign. Atalanta hired him, presumably, because he used to be one of Gasperini’s assistants.

The club is, at least, one of the more experimental and forward-thinking groups in Italy; Musah should have plenty of opportunities to play. And given that there’s a make-it-permanent option in the deal, Atalanta are not incentivized to play someone else on a long-term deal ahead of him, either.

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Yunus Musah explains Gold Cup absence

Yunus Musah explains why he missed the Gold Cup for the U.S. Men’s National Team.

What it means for the USMNT: Some of the consternation about Musah’s career has been overblown. He’s only 22, and he has started more than 30 games for a club that was in the Champions League in each of the previous two seasons. But the situation in Milan was completely unstable, and there’s no reason to think that Atalanta should be any worse. If he’s going to have a breakout season, it’s more likely to happen in Bergamo.

Juventus to Marseille, loan, €1 million
Grade: C

What it means for the player: He’s taking a step down in team and league quality, but presumably he’s going to play more often — and do so in his preferred position. At least, that’s what I initially thought.

At Juventus, he was a spot starter at wing back. He played along the back line in his first match with Marseille, then he started the second match at left wing, only to be bumped back to left back in their most recent game.

Juventus always did seem a step too far for Weah — at least if he wanted to be a consistent starter in attack. Marseille should give him a chance to show that he’s able to be a solid starter in a major European league. He has never played 2,000 minutes in a domestic league season, but he at least has a chance to do that under Roberto De Zerbi.

The bigger issue with a temporary move to Marseille is that the culture at the club seems as if it might be toxic. Players are fighting with one another and the club is releasing videos where De Zerbi embarrasses another player in the middle of practice and tells him to “call his agent” because it’s time for him to find a new club. The club thought choosing to share this publicly made them look good.

In a World Cup year, Weah’s playing time could rely on Marseille being something they haven’t been in a while: stable.

What it means for the USMNT: It was always a little strange that one of the USMNT’s starting wingers wasn’t even playing as a winger for his club team. For all the risks with the state of things at Marseille, that’s probably outweighed by Weah getting plenty of potential minutes — and some of them on the wing — at a Champions League club.

Eintracht Frankfurt to Colorado Rapids, €7 million
Grade: C

What it means for the player: He’ll get to play more, and he’ll probably get a decent little raise going from Frankfurt to a designated player in MLS. But ultimately, I’m not sure it really matters that much? If he lights it up in MLS, teams in Europe will still want him since he’s still a few years away from his prime. And if he doesn’t light it up in MLS, then guess what? He wasn’t going to make it in Europe anyway.

What it means for the USMNT: I guess I could see people getting upset about this if Aaronson was the only young American currently playing in Europe, but like we just talked about: There’s literally a player starting for Atletico Madrid who probably wouldn’t make the World Cup roster if the tournament started next week.

In their statement about the move, Frankfurt said that Aaronson wanted the transfer, in part, because this was a World Cup year. And while Pochettino’s most recent roster certainly suggests that playing well in MLS is viewed in equal or better light to playing well in Europe, I’m not sure this one moves the needle much in either direction.

Borussia Dortmund to Borussia Monchengladbach, €4 million
Grade: B-

What it means for the player: If we grade this on a broader scale, that letter would be close to an “F”. There was a time where Reyna wasn’t just the most exciting USMNT prospect; no, he was genuinely one of the most exciting prospects in world soccer. He was supposed to be the next dude at Dortmund. After Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho, it was going to be Reyna and Jude Bellingham. Now, one of them stars for Real Madrid, and the other one is moving teams for less than the Rapids paid to sign Brenden Aaronson‘s brother.

After starting 23 league matches as a 17-year-old in 2020-21, Reyna has started 16 games in the four combined seasons since. So, he just needed to go anywhere remotely competitive where he might be able to get some consistent minutes. And Gladbach fit the bill. They’re not going to be in a relegation fight, they’re not going to be in a title race, and they’re in the one league that Reyna knows. It’s as good of a spot as any for him to try to revive his career.

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Gio Reyna responds to USMNT omission

Gio Reyna speaks to Herculez Gomez about his omission from Mauricio Pochettino’s latest USMNT roster.


What it means for the USMNT: It’s hard to see this as anything but a positive. How much of Reyna’s issues at Dortmund were his own issues, and how much of it came down to a club that has lost its way over the past couple of years? We should find out pretty quickly. If he plays this season, he’s on the roster and probably starting next summer. If not, then who knows when we might see him in a U.S. shirt again.

Charlotte FC to Derby County, €6.9 million
Grade: B-

What it means for the player: He’ll get a chance to fight it out in a Championship relegation battle — at some point. Agyemang is out for the start of the season after undergoing hernia surgery.

Presumably he’s getting a nice raise at Derby, and he’ll get to test himself at a higher level. Now, I wouldn’t call Derby the most stable environment. They had two managers last season, when they avoided relegation by three points, and it wasn’t that long ago that they were employing Wayne Rooney as a player-manager.

Agyemang, in other words, could be playing in League One in less than a year. But just seven years ago, the guy was playing Division III NCAA soccer for the Eastern Connecticut Warriors. If Derby was his best option among European suitors, then I can’t begrudge him wanting to challenge himself.

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Is Agyemang to Derby County the right move for the USMNT striker?

Shaka Hislop discusses Patrick Agyemang’s move to Derby County and reveals what he need to improve in his transition to English football.

What it means for the USMNT: The injury makes this more of a TBD, but I’m not convinced that Pochettino doesn’t view Agyemang as the USMNT’s current starting striker. So, there’s suddenly a great deal of uncertainty there. Had he stayed in MLS, Agyemang would’ve received plenty of game time and been given every chance to make the World Cup roster. The move to Derby, combined with his injury, at least opens up the possibility that Agyemang doesn’t get on the field much this season.

Lyon to New England Revolution, loan
Grade: C+

What it means for the player: Presumably, that brings an end to Turner’s European career. After establishing himself as the best goalkeeper in MLS history, Turner ended up starting only 17 total matches over his three seasons in England.

During those 17 starts with Nottingham Forest in the 2023-24 season, he conceded six more goals than expected from the shots he faced, per Stats Perform’s post-shot expected goals model. For comparison, he conceded 28 goals fewer than expected in his five previous seasons with the Revolution. In England, pretty much every reasonably difficult shot he faced turned into a goal:

Yes, Turner is technically on loan from Lyon, who technically paid an €8 million fee to Nottingham Forest to acquire him this summer, but that’s a player being used for financial engineering. You don’t sign a 31-year-old for that much money and then immediately loan him out if you actually expect him to ever play for your team.

What it means for the USMNT: They’ll get to see if Turner actually still is the best American goalkeeper. Presumably, he is, but there’s really no way to know when that player barely ever plays over a three-season stretch. And well, he already has started four league games for the Revolution — four more than he played over the past year and a half.

FC Koln to Southampton, €8 million
Grade: B

What it means for the player: While Downs is trading a first division for a second division, he’s likely getting a pay raise at Southampton. He’s joining a club that gives tons of playing time to young players. He’s playing for a coach, Will Still, who guided another young American striker, Folarin Balogun, to his own breakout season in France. Plus, Koln and Southampton — a newly promoted Bundesliga side and a newly relegated Championship club — are probably at about the same level.

At Southampton, he’ll still get to play in a competitive league and for a team that’s likely to be competing for automatic promotion. It has been only limited bench appearances so far, but he has been dangerous in the 90-something minutes he has been given.

What it means for the USMNT: There’s not much of a difference between the two club situations. Pochettino likes him somewhat; Downs made the most recent roster. He’s unlikely to be a significant contributor next summer, but Southampton is a decent spot for his longer-term development.

Additional reporting by Todd Archer, Rob Demovsky, Dan Graziano and Seth Wickersham

THE PIVOTAL MEETING that led to one of the most shocking NFL trades of the past decade occurred on a pleasant North Texas morning in mid-March, five months and a lifetime of ill feelings ahead of any deal being put to paper.

The agenda for the March 18 one-on-one in Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ office at The Star, the team’s headquarters in Frisco, Texas, between Jones and two-time first-team All-Pro pass rusher Micah Parsons remains in question. A source close to Jones says it was Parsons who asked for the meeting, and that the 82-year-old owner always understood the subject to be Parsons’ contract. After declaring in February 2024 that he wanted to be a Cowboy “for life,” Parsons had been trying to reach an extension with the team, without success.

“Jerry and Micah had met periodically over the last four years to discuss business and leadership issues,” the source said, noting that the then-25-year-old Parsons viewed Jones as a mentor. “Jerry loved having these discussions with Micah. But the meeting in March wasn’t that, despite Micah saying publicly later it was to discuss leadership. Micah told Jerry, ‘I want to come in and discuss where we are,’ meaning a contract extension. So that was Jerry’s expectation.”

A source close to Parsons said this is “absolutely not” true and that Jones called Parsons in for a leadership meeting, only to steer the conversation toward contract talks. The source says Parsons directed Jones to talk details with his agent, David Mulugheta. However the conversation got to a contract extension, both parties acknowledge that it got there.

Over a three-hour meeting, Jones and Parsons discussed numbers, years and guaranteed money. Both sides expected to reset the market for edge rushers, topping the $40 million average per season and $123.5 million guaranteed that Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns had received nine days earlier. Parsons’ 52.5 sacks in his career are the fifth most in a player’s first four seasons. Jones said after Parsons left his office at The Star, the owner believed an agreement was done.

Later the same day, Parsons called Cowboys chief operating officer and co-owner Stephen Jones, Jerry’s son, in an attempt to get more money out of the deal, the source told ESPN.

“[Parsons] called Stephen and asked can we do this, can we change the numbers and up the guarantee,” the source said. “He started negotiating. He asked for several different elements and increases. This became a negotiation that Micah was in charge of.”

Stephen Jones consulted with his father, and Jerry agreed to the sweetened terms. The Cowboys believed they had a deal in place with Parsons and would continue to insist that he had agreed to it. Though the exact terms aren’t known, Cowboys sources insist they offered more guaranteed money than the $136 million Parsons would get from Green Bay, albeit spread across a five-year extension, not the four-year extension the Packers worked out.

“It was north of $150 million,” the source said.

The Cowboys had been known to conduct contract talks without players’ agents present — a practice known around the league as “hotboxing.” Dak Prescott‘s 2024 deal was one such negotiation, whereby the Joneses and the quarterback discussed Prescott’s place within the organization’s future and Prescott’s agent, Todd France, came in later to negotiate the finer details of a contract. (“I never engaged in numbers,” Prescott said.) The deal was eventually signed the day of Dallas’ first game of the season. If the Cowboys expected this negotiation to follow the same path, Mulugheta was about to confront them with a counterpoint.

Jones would say in August on Michael Irvin’s podcast, “We were going to send [the terms] over to the agent and the agent said don’t bother because we’ve got all that to negotiate.”

To this day, Parsons’ agency has never seen the final details or structure of the deal that Jones said he cut with Parsons in April, per a source close to Parsons. Jones and Mulugheta would never truly negotiate at any point. Dallas would simply say the deal is done; Parsons can have it if he wants it. (Mulugheta declined to comment for this story, but discussed the matter on ESPN’s “First Take” Tuesday.)

“I’m the one who has to sign the check and Micah is the one who has to agree to it,” Jones said on April 1 at the NFL owners spring meeting in Palm Beach, Florida. “That’s the straightest way to get there, is the one who writes the check and the one who is agreeing to it talking.”

The Jones source said he had nothing against Mulugheta, though Jones insisted to reporters in Palm Beach that he didn’t know Mulugheta’s name, adding, “The agent is not a factor here, or something to worry about.” At that point, Jones was dug in because “Micah looked him in his eyes and said we have a deal.” The source relayed a feeling from Jones of, “Oh so that’s how they are going to do it. Micah is going to negotiate with us, we’re going to go up, we’re going to have an agreement, and then the agent says that’s the floor and we’re going to go from there?”

“Jerry was like, ‘Hell no. That’s not the way this is going to work.'”

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Schefter breaks down how Parsons to the Packers came to be

Adam Schefter breaks down the massive Micah Parsons trade from Dallas to Green Bay.

WITH THE PARSONS situation seemingly at an impasse, the Cowboys readied themselves for the 2025 NFL draft in late April. Parsons’ future with the team was not an issue stressed by draft pundits or armchair analysts, most of whom had Dallas selecting a wide receiver with the No. 12 pick. The Cowboys would fill a different need by taking guard Tyler Booker, then in early May getting their receiver by making a trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers to obtain mercurial wideout George Pickens.

The benefit of hindsight suggests Dallas’ second-round selection had greater meaning than believed at the time, though a Cowboys source said the Parsons matter did not affect their draft board. Edge rusher Donovan Ezeiruaku, chosen with the No. 44 pick, came off a season in which he led the FBS with 62 quarterback pressures and had 16.5 sacks. Those seeking subtext behind the Ezeiruaku pick mostly noted that edge rushers Dante Fowler Jr. (signed on a one-year deal in March — the Packers were believed by league sources to be runners-up for his services) and Sam Williams were heading into contract years, and that the rookie could help ensure the future. Less meaningful to observers was the fact that Parsons was headed into a contract year too.

Although Jones would later say the team began discussing the idea of a Parsons trade in the spring, Dallas did not explore trade talks involving Parsons before the draft, per a Cowboys team source. For one, the contract negotiations were still fresh and the team harbored hope of Parsons accepting the previously discussed deal. The Cowboys also prefer to do trades postdraft when they believe other teams are less inclined to cling to personnel. The Pickens deal reinforced that philosophy.

But the longer Parsons went without a contract, the less likely he and Mulugheta were to accept the terms Jones believed had been agreed upon in March — the edge rusher market had begun to skyrocket. In the weeks before the Jones/Parsons summit at the Cowboys practice facility, the Las Vegas Raiders‘ Maxx Crosby (three years, $106.5 million, $91.5 million guaranteed) and Browns’ Garrett ($40 million per year and $123.5 million guaranteed) had inked new deals. By mid-July, the Steelers’ T.J. Watt would sign a three-year, $123 million extension that established him as the league’s highest-paid nonquarterback on an average salary per year basis.

Sources close to Parsons believed that he, more than three years younger than Garrett and five years younger than Watt, would blow those deals away. And a Cowboys source said the team got indications that Parsons’ camp would prefer to “go last” in the pass-rush market, because prices were only rising.

As Jones watched the market spike around him, the Cowboys owner and GM grew increasingly comfortable letting Parsons play on his fifth-year option or trading him.

Balancing the cost of the entire roster was a factor in Dallas’ calculus. Only one team — the Cincinnati Bengals — has three players making at least $30 million per year. If the Cowboys had given Parsons more than $40 million annually, they would have had the league’s highest-paid defender, highest-paid quarterback in Prescott ($60 million per year) and one of the highest-paid wide receivers in CeeDee Lamb ($34 million).

If the Cowboys weren’t paying Parsons, it would make negotiating with in-house stars, most notably guard Tyler Smith and cornerback DaRon Bland, an easier proposition. Smith, a 2022 first-round pick, could get his extension after Year 3 in a way Parsons did not. Bland was signed to a four-year, $92 million extension on Sunday.

“It’s an allocation of money,” Jones said the night the trade was completed. “So, we chose to have numbers of players that we could pay handsomely that would be those caliber of players, not young practice squad players. We’re talking players that can really compete.”

And while Parsons’ presence in the lineup was impossible to replicate — by expected points added per play from 2021 through 2024, the Cowboys were the NFL’s best defense with Parsons on the field and the league’s worst by the same metric when he was not — Dallas also believed there were times when his skills were counterproductive to the winning cause. Parsons ranked 68th among edge rushers in stop rate against the run and 81st in yards per run stop last season, according to the FTN Football Almanac.

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Orlovsky slams Parsons trade as ‘one of the worst’ in Cowboys’ history

Dan Orlovsky goes off on the Cowboys for allowing Micah Parsons to leave and receiving very little in draft picks from the trade.

“For Jerry, it came back to we have got to be able to stop the run,” the source close to Jones said. “Micah does not do that. In fact, because we couldn’t stop the run, it made Micah less effective. Then they’re going to run right at him, and that’s not what he does. We could not take care of mission critical.”

Still, the Cowboys were preparing as if Parsons would be in the lineup in 2025. They understood how difficult it would be to trade him, even though a team source said they were unconcerned about the public relations fallout the team would face given his popularity with fans. This was a business and personnel consideration only, and the Joneses’ belief that the price would have to be two first-round picks and an established defensive player was crystallized as the return about a week out from the trade, per a team source.

The last star pass rusher traded on his rookie contract — also right before the start of the season — was Khalil Mack in 2018. The Chicago Bears sent two-first-round picks to the then-Oakland Raiders to acquire him; Mack had 40.5 sacks through four seasons, 12.5 fewer than Parsons over the same time frame. Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst, in his first season in charge at the time, had a comparable offer to the Raiders turned down, an experience that might have helped get the deal for Parsons over the line.

“I think what I learned from [the Mack] experience is you’ve got to be in it early,” Gutekunst said Friday.

Only a week out from the start of the regular season, there simply wouldn’t be many trade suitors willing to pay that freight, especially when they would have to negotiate a market-shattering new contract with Parsons on top of the draft and personnel capital they would be expending.

Meanwhile, Parsons himself had remained around the team, showing up to a crawfish boil and paintball outing during the first two days of the offseason program in April as a stated show of leadership and support for new coach Brian Schottenheimer. In June, Parsons told reporters he would attend training camp, though a hold-in began to emerge as a likely proposition absent a new deal.

“When you go around the league and you see these other teams taking care of their best guys, I seen T.J. [Watt] gotten taken care of. Maxx [Crosby] got taken care of. Myles [Garrett] got taken care of, [and] he’s got two years left on his deal,” Parsons said on July 22, the day after training camp began. “You see a lot of people around the league taken care of, and you wish you had that same type of energy.”

There was tension, but the relationship between Parsons and the Cowboys was bubbling at a low simmer. Almost without warning, it would boil over.

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Tannenbaum: Trading Micah Parsons was a ‘massive strategic mistake’

Mike Tannenbaum sounds off on Jerry Jones and the Cowboys’ decision to trade Micah Parsons to the Packers.

IN AN ERA when statements from famous athletes are painstakingly stage-managed by player agents and teams of publicists, this gave the appearance of something different.

At 1:16 p.m. CT on Friday, Aug. 1, Parsons transmitted three pages of single-spaced text from his iPhone’s Notes app to X, laying out chapter and verse of his discontent with the Cowboys. He revealed his perspective on the March meeting with Jones, the parameters of the contract agreement that he said he believed were a starting point and the Cowboys thought represented an agreement, and capped it all off with a trade demand.

“Unfortunately I no longer want to be here,” Parsons wrote. “I no longer want to be held to close door negotiations without my agent present. I no longer want shots taken at me for getting injured while laying it on the line for the organization our fans and my teammates. I no longer want narratives created and spread to the media about me. I had purposely stayed quiet in hopes of getting something done.”

The quiet had been interrupted, though it had been Jerry Jones who had broken the silence earlier in camp with an indictment of Parsons’ durability and availability.

“Just because we sign him doesn’t mean we’re going to have him,” Jones said. “He was hurt six games last year [actually four]. Seriously. I remember signing a player for the highest-paid at the position in the league and he got knocked out two-thirds of the year in Dak Prescott. So, there’s a lot of things you can think about, just as the player does, when you’re thinking about committing and guaranteeing money.”

Parsons missed only one game over his first three seasons in the league.

The “repeated shots” Parsons cited continued when Jones was asked to respond to the “Pay Micah” chants the owner was serenaded with by fans at camp.

“I heard it light, but not compared to how I heard them say, ‘Pay Lamb’ [last year],” Jones said a day later. “That was a faint little sound compared to the way they were hollering last year, ‘Pay Lamb.’ … Whoever’s not in, you can count on a few hollering that. But it was a big loud chant last year on Lamb.”

Stephen Jones would further aggravate Parsons by commenting, “We want to pay Micah too, he’s got to want to be paid.”

Amid the pettiness and hurt feelings, Parsons continued to show up — a source close to Parsons said Mulugheta doesn’t see the value in players getting fined and advised him to be present — albeit while citing back tightness as the reason he wasn’t practicing. Parsons had an MRI on his back in late August that came back clean, according to Schottenheimer, and was cleared by Cowboys doctors to practice.

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Why Herbstreit applauds Dallas for trading Micah Parsons

Kirk Herbstreit thinks the Cowboys trading Micah Parsons will be good for developing a new team culture.

He continued to participate in walk-throughs and meetings but also exhibited strange behavior including not wearing his practice jersey, or on another day wearing it around his neck, and coming to practice without shoes. Before the team’s preseason finale against the Falcons, Parsons ate nachos as he walked to the locker room, and most memorably lay on a medical table during the game and appeared to close his eyes. The image went viral.

“[Cowboys pass-rushing legend] Charles Haley would have flipped him off the damn table if he saw that,” a team source said.

Parsons’ behavior during camp rubbed many in the building, including in the locker room, the wrong way, with one team source saying his energy was “deflating.” But a team source noted that Parsons stayed engaged in meetings and conducted his own two-a-days — one lift, one running session per workday. “I believed he was doing everything he could to be ready for Philly (Week 1),” the source said.

This encapsulates the Parsons experience to sources in the building over his four-year tenure. Multiple sources said he wasn’t the most diligent in the weight room or in getting treatment, though others considered him a hard worker who improved his communication skills with coaches and players but whose decision-making was sometimes in question. One example was Parsons’ outspokenness on his podcast, which rankled some teammates. The front office and coaches didn’t have a major problem with it. But teammate Malik Hooker made his issues known publicly last year. As one team source put it, Parsons was known to be critical, sometimes out of passion for the game, but coaches would urge him to consider that “you can’t call guys out who don’t have your ability,” and learning how to lead and “bring others along with you” is crucial. That part was considered a process for him.

Amid the turmoil, there were many in the game who believed a détente would eventually be reached. Multiple team sources believed Parsons was sincere in his stated desire to retire a Cowboy, noting that he recently built a home in the area. “I think he felt he was going to play out his career there,” a source said. Jerry Jones’ own words were another major reason why the matter seemed resolvable.

“Any talk of trading is B.S.,” Jones said on the “Stephen A. Smith Show” on Aug. 22 even as a team president who knows the Cowboys operation well told ESPN that in his discussions with them in August, it was clear that Dallas was prepared to move Parsons.

“Of course Jerry gave a head fake to the media,” a source close to Jones said. “You have to go out and say we are not interested in trading him. If you say you are trading him, you don’t get s—.” Jones would acknowledge to reporters after Parsons was traded that this had been a purposeful tactic.

Amid the drama around the contract and other lesser issues including Parsons’ practice habits among the pain points, the Joneses had seen enough. The Cowboys told the team president that they loved the player, but not the person. They had made up their minds. Now they just needed a trade partner.

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EJ Manuel questions how Cowboys could trade Micah Parsons

Sam Acho and EJ Manuel react to the Cowboys trading Micah Parsons to the Packers.

TWO DAYS BEFORE Parsons became a Packer, the pass rusher’s representatives made one last-ditch effort with the Cowboys — in the form of an email. The note from Mulugheta to Jerry and Stephen Jones, as one source who viewed the correspondence recalls, acknowledged that a lot of things had been said in the media, perhaps some miscommunications along the way, but despite all of that, Parsons was still willing to do a deal that would keep him in Dallas. The letter said Parsons’ representatives were willing to come to Dallas, jump on a video call, whatever it took to potentially hammer something out.

Jerry Jones responded to the message, saying the Cowboys were prepping a trade and if Parsons wanted to play in Dallas in 2025, he would have to do so on his fifth-year option. Parsons would become a free agent in 2026, but the team could also use the franchise tag to prevent his departure at that point. Parsons would have to decide his next move if the Cowboys couldn’t trade him, though a source close to him notes that Parsons never threatened to hold out and if healthy, he would have played on the option.

Things accelerated from there. The Packers, given permission to speak to Mulugheta by the Cowboys, made their first formal contract offer to Parsons on Tuesday. Green Bay had parameters of a trade hammered out that matched Dallas’ terms: Two first-round picks and veteran defensive tackle Kenny Clark would go to the Cowboys in exchange for Parsons. Clark, a staple of the Packers defense since entering the league in 2016, was hardly a throw-in. His contract was attractive — Green Bay had already paid him the bulk of his 2025 deal, so the Cowboys would pay him just $2 million this season, and $20 million unguaranteed next season. A two-year, $22 million deal for a high-level player was viewed as a win for a Dallas team that sees the 29-year-old Clark as a multiyear solution, and there would also be no dead money if the Cowboys chose to release him after the season.

“From our perspective, it had to include Kenny Clark,” a source close to Jones said. “The only way it worked for us, we need something that helps us now and helps us in the future.”

That Green Bay — the opponent that had knocked three of the best Cowboys teams of the past 11 years (2014, 2016, 2023) out of the playoffs — was the trade partner was apparently not a deterrent to getting the deal done.

As for Parsons’ new contract, while the Cowboys had been unwilling to deal with Mulugheta, the agent’s communication with the Packers was smooth, according to a source close to Parsons. Past deals for clients Jordan Love and Xavier McKinney offered familiarity between the parties, so hammering out an agreement took some time but was not painful according to the source. Had the deal fallen apart, at least three other teams were interested, and the Cowboys would not have traded Parsons within the division. One team told ESPN it wasn’t interested because it felt the price was too high for a player who might turn out to be a headache. Another believed Dallas wouldn’t trade Parsons until next spring and indicated they might be interested then.

Green Bay knew the deal would be costly and didn’t fight that reality, with a source familiar with negotiations saying the contract was “transparent and fast,” for the most part. The move to a deal gained steam in the hour or so before 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, once Mulugheta had laid out the trade terms and Parsons had signed off. Parsons’ four-year, $188 million deal included $120 million fully guaranteed at signing and $136 million in total guarantees, making him the highest-paid nonquarterback in NFL history.

The Packers have reached the playoffs five times in seven seasons under Gutekunst but have not made a Super Bowl during that time. Less than a year after Gutekunst was promoted to GM in 2018, then-team president Mark Murphy fired Mike McCarthy as coach with four games left in that season. In 2019, Murphy hired Matt LaFleur, who took Green Bay to two straight NFC title games, but the team hasn’t been back since. Both Gutekunst and LaFleur are under contract through the 2026 season, and both report to new team president Ed Policy, who took over in July after Murphy retired.

Several Packers sources said Gutekunst thought all along a trade for Parsons was a long shot. He thought that when push came to shove, Jerry Jones would not part ways with a star player in the prime of his career — an idea Gutekunst confirmed Friday in Parsons’ unveiling in Green Bay.

“The chances of these things [blockbuster trades] happening are pretty slim, and I think that was my mindset the whole time, was keep the conversations going because of the uniqueness of the player,” Gutekunst said. “But I don’t think it was really until the last few days that I actually thought, ‘Hey, there’s an opportunity here to close this thing out.'”

When doing their homework on Parsons, Gutekunst and the Packers reached out to people that had worked with, played with or coached Parsons in college and in Dallas.

He wouldn’t name names, but league sources said Gutekunst and McCarthy, who coached the Packers from 2006 to 2018 and Cowboys from 2020 to 2024, maintained a good relationship. Parsons and McCarthy had a solid connection — the edge rusher said in January that Dallas’ decision to part ways with his former coach was “devastating.”

One Packers source said the possibility of landing Parsons started to feel real about a week before the deal, which lines up with Dallas’ timeline of when the Cowboys got serious.

By late afternoon Thursday, LaFleur spoke directly with Parsons about their new partnership, with his assistant coaches coming in and out of LaFleur’s office to high-five and celebrate.

As to which team got the better end of the deal, opinions varied, though the most forceful reaction came in the form of criticism leveled at the polarizing Jerry Jones. Two NFL executives questioned why the Cowboys didn’t get more in return after the trade went down.

“Very bad for Dallas in that they received little compensation in comparison to other superstar prime trades,” a separate NFC executive said. “It’s OK for Green Bay in that their interests are to get beyond the first or second round. I think [Parsons is] a very productive regular-season player. I think when teams start running heavy in the playoffs, he becomes less scary.”

In a news conference following the trade, one in which Jerry Jones repeatedly referred to Parsons as “Michael,” the owner justified the move.

“It takes more than one [player to win a championship] and so you do have to allocate your resources, whether it be draft picks or whether it be finances, you have to allocate those resources,” Jones said. “There was no question in our mind that [Micah] could bring us a lot of resources on a trade.”

As Jones took heat for the deal in some corners, others in the league were more conciliatory toward Dallas, especially when noting the increased salary cap flexibility and how it could impact the Cowboys’ negotiations with other core players.

“[Filling a] DT need and two 1s is a good haul, honestly,” an AFC executive said. “Plus, not paying another max contract. That’s a big part of this.”

The Joneses expressed a belief that they would end up with another three to five players out of the deal, in addition to taking care of Smith and Bland.

The end of the Parsons era in Dallas, perhaps fittingly, came in the form of another tweet — this one a farewell. While expressing his appreciation to Cowboys fans and vowing that North Texas would continue to be his offseason home, Parsons acknowledged the fractious negotiations that had reached a tipping point with that much-debated meeting with Jerry Jones.

“I never wanted this chapter to end, but not everything was in my control. My heart has always been here, and it still is. Through it all, I never made any demands,” Parsons said, not acknowledging his trade request. “I never asked for anything more than fairness. I only asked that the person I trust to negotiate my contract be part of the process.”

Parsons made his first appearance in Green Bay the next day, meeting the local media and expressing relief at his situation’s resolution. He dismissed his back problem — revealed on Monday to be an L4/L5 facet joint sprain for which the Cowboys had prescribed a five-day plan of an anti-inflammatory corticosteroid and a physical therapy program — as something that would be a major issue, reinforcing the belief that his contract, not health, was at the core of his limited summer participation. Parsons practiced with the Packers on Monday.

“I think physically, you know, I’m great,” Parsons said. “I think I can contribute a lot. I’m going to team up with the doctors in creating a plan. We already talked about how we can ramp things up and get me into a flow where they feel comfortable and I feel comfortable.”

Parsons will return to Dallas with his new team on Sept. 28, for a Sunday night, Week 4 showdown against the Cowboys. His final appearance at AT&T Stadium as a Cowboy will be remembered for the sight of Parsons splayed across a training table. His next one, wearing a Packers uniform, figures to restore the vision of how Parsons became one of the elite defensive players of his generation in the first place. Parsons himself noted the stakes of what comes next.

“They didn’t give up what they gave up for me to sit on the sidelines.”