Micah Parsons Draws Parallel Between 2023 Cowboys, 2000 Ravens

The star Dallas Cowboys pass rusher has high hopes ahead of his third NFL season.

As offseason hope blooms among all 32 NFL teams, Cowboys star Micah Parsons spoke recently about why the 2023 campaign could finally be Dallas’s year, thanks to an elite defense he says has potential similar to one of the NFL’s greatest defensive units.

Speaking to reporters during OTAs, the third-year edge rusher pointed out the potential impact of Dallas returning 10 defensive starters and adding veteran cornerback Stephon Gilmore and rookie defensive tackle Mazi Smith, the 26th pick in the 2023 draft.

In Parsons’s eyes, keeping a group together that ranked among the NFL’s best should be enough to get the job done, inspiring him to draw an interesting parallel to the vaunted 2000 Super Bowl-champion Ravens’ defense, led by Hall of Famer Ray Lewis.

“You just feel it in the room,” Parsons said Thursday, via Cowboys Wire. “Everybody’s like, ‘This has got to be the year.’ Each year I’ve been here, we’ve gone a little bit further, a little bit further. Now I’m hoping we don’t have to [settle for] some small jump to the NFC [championship game] and go home; I’m hoping we go all the way.

“We all know how each other plays, we know how to communicate with each other. Just like in a relationship: you start from ground zero, you’ve got to learn how to build the basis of how each other works. That history is going to be great. That was the difference for that Ray Lewis team: they all came back and were like, ‘If they can’t score, they can’t win.’ I’m hoping we’ve got one of those special teams this year.”

As Parsons mentioned, the ’00 Ravens entered their title season with nine defensive starters who had been in Baltimore for at least two years. After posting a 12–4 record in the regular season, the team went on to cruise through the playoffs and demolish the Giants, 34–7, in Super Bowl XXXV. In addition to New York, the Ravens D held 15 of their 20 opponents under 10 points or fewer.

While Parsons hopes Dallas’s continuity produces a similar result, only time will tell if the ’23 season is the year the club breaks its 27-year Super Bowl drought. 

Since Parsons’s arrival in 2021, Dallas has earned back-to-back playoff berths after 12–5 seasons, with the first ending in the wild-card round and the second ending in the divisional round after a wild-card win. The Cowboys finished the last two seasons ranked seventh and fifth in scoring defense, respectively.