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If I were a Cowboys fan, I’d be really, really excited about Micah Parsons’s future. And I’ll first credit my buddy and old colleague Rich Eisen for getting this story out of former Rams tackle Andrew Whitworth on the Dallas phenom.
Last week, Whitworth traveled to Collective Gym in Austin to get three days of work in with Parsons. It came at Parsons’s request, as Whitworth explained on The Rich Eisen Show, and hearing that was enough to prompt me to reach out to the star lineman turned Amazon analyst to get a little more on how the whole thing came together.
It turns out, the two hadn’t had any interaction outside of taking a few reps against each other in a joint practice-scrimmage during training camp in 2021—Whitworth’s last year and Parsons’s first in the NFL. After those reps, Whitworth recalls giving Parsons feedback as they jogged to the next drill, what he thought the rookie did well, and what he could work on, and thought to himself, Man, this guy is gonna be a really good pass rusher.
“You could tell, even in just those reps,” Whitworth told me Sunday. “You get a feel, having played against a trillion guys over the years, the guys who can set you up, and who have a real feel. And just in those two plays we went against each other, I could see that ability.”
Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports (Whitworth); Jerome Miron/USA TODAY Sports (Parsons)
Then, last year, as Whitworth started his work for Amazon, he’d tweet observations, and Parsons would comment on them, and the two started trading DMs. That led to Parsons reaching out a few weeks ago, saying to Whitworth that he’d gotten a lot of work in with a variety of pass-rush specialists, but really wanted to learn from someone on the other side, who’d have to plan to slow him down.
“At first, it was like, I’m not sure this makes sense,” Whitworth says. “And then you think about it, and it’s just like, what a genius idea. … Why wouldn’t you want that?”
So last Monday, Whitworth flew to Austin, and on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the two worked together. The first two days, they primarily worked in the film room and classroom. “I let him pick out games he liked or didn’t like against certain guys,” Whitworth says. And, in turn, Whitworth tried to take him inside the mind of a top tackle, looking at players tier by tier, starting with guys such as Laremy Tunsil, Trent Williams and Lane Johnson.
Whitworth also picked out some edge rushers he thought were built a little more like Parsons, who isn’t a long-armed tarantula type (like a Myles Garrett), showing how players such as James Harrison and Trent Cole would win with moves in technique.
Finally, on Thursday, they took it out to the field, and put on what Whitworth described to be a little like a boxing workout, in how a trainer would fine-tune a fighter. And while there was plenty physically that Parsons put on display, it was the intangible part of it that really blew Whitworth away.
“He is a dynamic person just in how driven he is,” Whitworth says. “He was so excited to be doing the work the whole time, just to try to find that little thing that he needed, and that’s unique—to be as good as he is but still so hungry to find the next edge.”
And as for the wow factor that Parsons brings, well, Whitworth got that, too, while the Cowboys star was doing box jumps and agility drills with Bengals star Ja’Marr Chase and Dallas rookie Deuce Vaughn. “To win some of those drills like he did against those guys at his size,” Whitworth says, “is just crazy.”
As for Whitworth himself, in his first real football drills since Super Bowl LVI in February 2022, he did get that still got it sort of feeling—“It made you feel like you could still do this, not because you beat him, but because the passion is still there.” And, sure, he’s had some designs on coaching someday, to the point where he’s sat in on parts of the Rams’ offseason program, and not just on offensive-line-specific stuff, and plans to visit some other teams’ OTAs (he’s also done some work as he did with Parsons in helping NFL linemen who’ve reached out).
That said, his biggest takeaway from the whole thing was still what he saw from the guy who asked him to make the trip. Whitworth, for sure, is glad he did.
“I just think it’s crazy that it was on his mind to do this,” Whitworth says. “It’s really cool that that’s his perspective, that he’s trying so hard to find a way to get a percent better. You just think about the humbleness of it, and not because I’m so great or anything, but just to want to work with someone you don’t know like that. It’s awesome that he’s wired that way. The dude is different.”
He most certainly is.
