Cowboys icon DeMarcus Ware says Micah Parsons won’t do a podcast during the season if he joins the coaching staff

The Dallas Cowboys they are looking for new leaders to save them from chaos. One of their old leaders thinks he has a solution.

Former Dallas player and Hall of Famer Demarcus Ware told Fox News Digital he could join the Cowboys next coaching staff under certain condition. He wants his former teammate Jason Witten to be the team’s head coach.

“I vouch for him to be the head coach, he might vouch for me to come in and some kind of defensive coach,” Ware said in an exclusive interview. “There’s a 94% chance that if Jason Witten becomes the head coach, that Demarcus is very interested in getting there as well.”

Witten has been a head coach at the high school level since 2021, when he took over Liberty Christian High School in Argyle, Texas. Witten reportedly turned down several assistant coaching jobs in the NFL and college programs to take the Liberty Christian job, according to ESPN.

Meanwhile, Ware worked as a passing consultant on the Denver Broncos’ coaching staff in 2018.

If Ware were to join a hypothetical coaching staff led by Witten, Ware says he would prioritize working current star linebacker Micah Parsons. Ware says the Cowboys defense lacked the “lightning” from Parsons that it needs to compete for the Super Bowl.

“If he can get consistent on the field and play like he’s playing at the beginning of the season, he’s like the electricity that the team needs to wake up,” Ware said. “If we can get him to play defense consistently, we’d win more games and take the pressure off [quarterback] Dak Prescott.”

If the staff led by Witten and Ware comes to fruition, Ware suggests that Parsons will not do a podcast every week during the NFL season, as Parsons has done since the start of the 2023 season when “The Edge With Micah Parsons” launched on Bleacher Report.

“It probably won’t work during the season, I know it won’t,” Ware said. “Because he’s going to be too focused on getting to the quarterback and he’s just going to create chaos in the backfield.”

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Ware says that a weekly podcast during the season is not something he would do in his career, especially early in it. Ware believes it’s a “tough” balancing act for Parsons.

“It’s very difficult,” Ware said of Parsons’ overlapping football and media commitments. “There are some things you probably can’t say and questions that will be asked to kind of pressure you to do the press.”

During a November 2023 episode of Parsons’ podcast, after a game against the Carolina Panthers in which he threw up on the bench, Parsons revealed that his teammates had forced him to overdose on C4 Energy powder before the game, causing him chest pain and eventual nausea. He ended the story by suggesting that he caved in under “peer pressure”.

In an episode in September of that year, while discussing the relationship between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, Parsons encouraged other NFL players to pursue relationships with high-profile female celebrities, specifically naming Zendaya as someone they should follow. He said this despite the fact that Zendaya has been in a long-term relationship with Spider-Man actor Tom Holland since 2021.

Parsons has since faced backlash from his own teammates for his decision to do a podcast during the season. That criticism came during a separate podcast appearance by Cowboys safety Malik Hooker.

“My advice would be for Micah, it would be: Just make sure we’re OK and stay where your feet are,” Hooker said in a June 27 interview with Podcast “All facts without brakes”.. “Because if we’re out there working and the running game is terrible, but you’re doing a podcast every week — and you know the running game is terrible — what do you really care about? Do you care about the audience watching your podcast, or do you care about success our team and the Super Bowl we’re trying to reach?”

When Parsons was pressed by reporters about the distraction his podcast could pose during training camp on Aug. 21, the star pass rusher became a staunch defender.

“I don’t think anyone cares what I do on Monday afternoons when I’m at home with my kids,” he said. “So why should they care if I’m on Xbox? I think we all have our free time. When you’re all out of here, do you all think of me at home? I hope not.

“I try not to say (anything) controversial, but everyone will always be attracted to something. They will try to take one thing. We all have opinions. We will not agree to what everyone says. That’s life.”

Parsons went on to have his worst season as a pro in the months that followed. He had a career-low 12 sacks, 43 tackles and 23 QB hits while playing in a career-low 13 games. He missed games due to injury for the first time in his NFL career. The team had its worst season since joining in 2021, finishing 7-10, which resulted in the departure of head coach Mike McCarthy.

Now Parsons heads into the offseason preparing to change coaches for the first time as a pro. He is also seeking a contract extension that some experts have projected could exceed the largest for a single defensive player in league history. That record is currently held by San Francisco 49ers star Nick Bosa, who signed a five-year, $170 million contract in 2023.

Parsons’ current salary is currently unknown to Bleacher Report. As much as it is, it complements a base NFL salary of just $2.2 million in 2023 and $2.9 million in 2024. However, that figure will jump to $24 million in 2025 under a five-year option on his rookie contract. He will then be a free agent and could be paid well north of that figure.

If Ware ends up on the Cowboys’ coaching staff, Parsons could sacrifice his Bleacher Report salary while his NFL base salary increases.

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Still, Ware suggests he wouldn’t have a problem with Parsons doing a podcast in the offseason.

“Having a podcast, doing things like that, I’m just not going to do them during the season. Because I’m just focused on football and winning football games and winning championships, but after that we can talk about whatever we want in whatever sport, whatever we’re into.” Ware said.

– When I win a lot, I can talk a lot.

Ware thinks the Cowboys defense lacked focus at the end of the season and knows the consequences of the devastating losses to the Giants

Ware’s approach to Parsons is just one part of his larger view of the Cowboys’ defense and what he would try to bring as a coach to the staff.

“Staying focused at the end of the season when it matters,” Ware said when asked what the Cowboys’ defense has lacked in recent years. “Because usually most of the distractions happen at the end of the season because you’re struggling … everybody’s got their hands on you.”

Ware learned the consequences of a lack of focus ahead of the playoffs during his playing career with the Cowboys. For him, he says that the most difficult moments in the playoffs that he experienced were the consequent losses to the New York Giants.

“Heaviest playoff losses? Are you kidding me? Both losses to the Giants!” Ware said. Then they won the Super Bowl, and that was probably one of the hardest things.”

The Cowboys lost to the Giants in the NFC Divisional Round in 2007, when the Cowboys were 13-3 and Super Bowl favorites, while the Giants were a Wild Card team at 10-6. The Giants won 21-17, en route to a historic Super Bowl XLII victory over Tom Brady and the undefeated New England Patriots.

Former Dallas quarterback Tony Romo threw a game-ending interception in the final seconds to seal the game, and he was under heavy scrutiny for failing to get the win after he was seen vacationing in Cabo, Mexico, with his then-girlfriend Jessica Simpson, during Week 1 goodbye team car. Witten was with them on vacation.

But Ware believes the break was detrimental to the entire team, not just Romo and Witten.

“I don’t think it was a trip, it was a break,” Ware said. “We have what we call mojo, and no matter what teams do, you have that ‘it’ factor. We had that. But when you take time off, sometimes a team can lose that … we had to practice every day to keep our minds and bodies sharp but something really light instead of sitting or resting because when we came back I could tell something was missing and that was an advantage.

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In 2011, the Giants and Cowboys met in the final week of the regular season with the division title on the line. The Giants won that game 31-14, en route to their second Super Bowl championship against Brady and the Patriots.

Ware left the Cowboys for the Denver Broncos in 2014, and a year later won the first and only Super Bowl L ring of his career.

The Cowboys haven’t been to the Super Bowl since the 1995 season.

But Ware could get a chance to help end that drought if the Cowboys hire Witten as their next head coach.

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