Washington Commanders head coach Dan Quinn knows Micah Parsons well. Dallas hired Quinn as defensive coordinator in 2021. That gave him a few seasons to coach Parsons before joining the Commanders as head coach. Quinn cannot escape playing against Parsons, even though he was just traded out of the division.
Quinn joked that the Packers should sit the star edge rusher ahead of their matchup on Thursday Night Football.
“Are you asking what would I do if I were coaching him? I'd sit him this week. Yeah, short week,” Quinn said, laughing, per NFL.com's Kevin Patra.
Quinn noted that Parsons' versatility is one of his most dangerous traits. Opposing offenses cannot always predict where Parsons will line up.
“Like Micah and other great players, you want to know where they are to how to go play,” he said, “and if you have a vulnerability in a spot, you want to make sure you can fortify that to a strength. So, you don't just leave it to chance and see what happens.”
The Commanders will need to keep eyes on Parsons throughout the game.
Dan Quinn explains why it is hard to game plan against Packers defense
Quinn also explained why it is so hard to game plan against the Packers now that Parsons is in town.
“You want to make sure there's a plan to go into it,” Quinn said. “And so, for teams like Green Bay, they've got a number of good players and that makes it also more challenging when this one and this one and that one over there. So, when there's just one player that to stop and say, ‘OK, this is what we want to do,' that's easier than when there's multiple people in different locations. So, in my experience, the best of the best teams have had a number of players that were high-level hitters and now this one gets too much attention. You leave this one open, he's going to shoot the three and make you pay. And so, you want to have enough balance in how you do things to make sure that one player doesn't get too much attention but also enough that they don't wreck the game.”
The Packers have Rashan Gary and Lukas Van Ness working alongside Parsons. It will be difficult for the Commanders to slow all of them down in Week 2.
Hopefully Quinn does come up with a good plan for neutralizing Parsons' impact. Otherwise, the Packers could run away with this game.
Packers vs. Commanders kicks off at 8:15PM ET on Thursday.
