2021 NFL Draft: Raiders top 5 worst picks of the first round

5. Micah Parsons, LB, Penn State (12th overall, Cowboys)

The Dallas Cowboys missed out on the guys they really wanted with the 10th overall pick, perhaps in order when the Carolina Panthers and Denver Broncos selected Jaycee Horn and Patrick Surtain II, respectively.

Without their top two targets on the board, the Dallas Cowboys traded down with their division rival Philadelphia Eagles, and despite picking up an additional third-round pick in the process, the Cowboys took a pretty big risk on Penn State’s Micah Parsons.

The Cowboys are no strangers to taking big, athletic off-ball linebackers, but Parsons is a guy that is a bit tough to project in the NFL.

With the Cowboys in Dan Quinn’s defense, you could project him as either a Bruce Irvin type or KJ Wright type, but this selection is riskier for off-field reasons than Parsons’ lack of overall development on it.

There have been plenty of documented incidents with Parsons off the field since his high school days, all of which can be found with a simple Google search. Parsons addressed those issues by saying ahead of the 2021 NFL Draft that everyone makes dumb decisions when they are 17 or 18 years old.

That’s not exactly the type of response you want from a guy you’re about to throw a truckload of money at.

Perhaps the media has been too hard on Parsons, and he’s just misunderstood. Dallas has a chance to have a star on their hands here, but they could also be bringing in a guy whose off-field habits and history could be a problem.

Maybe the Cowboys should have gotten aggressive and tried to move up a bit, but no one knows if that was ever really a possibility. The Cowboys thought they’d be able to stay at 10 and get one of Horn or Surtain, but that didn’t happen.