DALLAS — About two hours to kickoff on a sunny afternoon outside AT&T Stadium, the tailgaters are in action and the music is rolling. Some tents have RedZone on and others have grills going. For the most part, Cowboy fans line the parking lot, but you would be surprised by the number of Packers fans outside Jerry World, too.
The scene is fitting for a game that will end in a 40–40 tie. It’s a home game for the Cowboys, but there are lots of Packers jerseys in the parking lot. Even the Dallas fans are rooting for Micah Parsons, who was traded to the Packers at the start of the season, to play well. And though they all hope the trade will work out for their beloved Cowboys, many of them are still angry at owner Jerry Jones for making the deal in the first place. The whole pregame scene reflects a split decision. So will the final score.
Jake and James Kazmerchak, from Wausau, Wis., about 95 minutes west of Green Bay, are here on a bet they won. Their sister, who bet on the Cowboys to win their last game against Green Bay in the 2024 NFC wild-card game, lost and is now funding her brothers’ tickets. Jake is wearing a green Parsons T-shirt, and it’s a sore topic among the family. “We’ve kind of avoided the conversation,” he says.
It’s a sore topic around the parking lot, too. Good rage-bait, if you will. Froy Daniel, a 30-year-old party planner, was “F---ing pissed” when Parsons was traded and is not a fan of the green Parsons jerseys. He hopes his old star will get 10 sacks. “Why not pay the man?” he wonders. “Why not pay what he deserves?” A man wearing No. 1 in green walks by and screams. “Go Pack Go,” as Daniel blurts out the rhetorical questions.
Among the Packers fans present, a good number wear Aaron Rodgers jerseys and some wear Jordan Love shirts, but there are plenty of Parsons T-shirts or jerseys going around. Ryan, Ben, Ian, and Connor, all from Kenosha, Wis., all love the Packers and all wear the same No. 1 T-shirt. On a family trip with two dads and two sons, they were choosing between going to Pittsburgh to watch Rodgers or Dallas, because, well, it’s Jerry World. But when the trade happened, they knew they had to be here.
“It’s gonna be a good game,” Ryan says. His crew agrees.
Taking the field about 10 minutes before kickoff, Parsons, once Dallas’s pride and joy, now wears green and gold. It was one month ago on the dot that he was sent to Lambeau Field for all-pro Kenny Clark and two future first-round picks. On the jumbotron, he is shown trotting out to his old stomping ground, greeted by the cheers of everyone inside. Above his head, it reads “intruder alert” in all red.
Connor, Ben, Ian, Ryan, the Kazmerchaks, Daniel and maybe the other 80,000 people inside AT&T Stadium expect a good game. But nobody anticipates an 80-point tie. Surely the box score can provide some answers, right?
Between the two traded players, Parsons and Clark combined for just five tackles. Parsons delivered a sack in overtime, but it was back at the line of scrimmage after a chase down of his old quarterback, Dak Prescott, for a zero-yard loss. It was enough to prevent a touchdown, but not enough to win the game.
The first game after the trade, as climactic a deal as we’ve seen in the modern NFL era, ended in complete anticlimax. All the fuss, from the trade to the lead-up to the game to Brandon McManus’s game-tying field goal, the tie made people leave the stadium more confused than satisfied. The crowd was unified in this way. Football teams win, at least in America, anyway.
Jerry Jones kept it simple when he spoke to the media. “They got [Parsons], and we’ve got what we’ve got,” he told reporters. “And we tied.”
Daniel is mad at Jones. Ryan and his crew are fans of the owner. But the million-dollar question all hoped to answer was, “Did Jones make a good trade?” Nobody got to answer that because nobody won. Nobody lost, but nobody cares because nobody won.
The trade, as significant to the Cowboys’ organization as any made since Herschel Walker was dealt to the Vikings in 1989, didn’t seem to solve much. Trades are supposed to give answers. At least the simple question of, Did we win the trade? From Parsons’s intruder alert to walking out of the stadium, nothing about Sunday night made sense. Everybody still gets to feel frustrated, as nobody got a satisfying win.
The two fan bases were pretty unified in this fact. Leaving the stadium, there were no cheers or excitement or screaming matches. An “At least we didn’t lose” was heard bouncing off a “F--- you Jerry” chant, because, well, what else is there to say?
American sports are built on results. A tie leaves everyone unsettled—the same way Cowboys fans felt when Parsons was dealt. When Daniel first saw the trade notification, he was devastated. Now, after watching his beloved star return only to tie his former team, what is there to even think about?
From the chaos and energy of the tailgating scene to the numb silence of the exit walk, nothing felt resolved. Everything was even, and everyone was left with the same thought.
Nobody won.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Split Decision: In Packers-Cowboys Showdown, Nobody Won.
