The San Francisco 49ers will head into their Sunday Night Football matchup against a shorthanded Dallas Cowboys team. Superstar Edge Rusher Micah Parsons will miss Sunday’s game due to a high ankle sprain he suffered back in Week 4. Parsons has already missed the last two games due to this injury and unfortunately for him, a bye week was not enough to get him ready for this week’s game.
For the Cowboys, Parsons’ absence is undoubtedly terrible news for their struggling defense, but for the 49ers, it shouldn’t make too much of a difference as far as their game plan goes. While it’ll certainly be easier against a Micah Parsons-less Cowboys defense, the 49ers have had success against this Cowboys defense both with and without Micah Parsons in the Kyle Shanahan era.
Micah Parsons History vs San Francisco
Micah Parsons has been a superstar since the minute he stepped onto an NFL field. In his first three seasons, Parsons has accumulated 40.5 sacks, three pro bowls, two first-team all-pros, a second-team all-pro, and three top-three finishes in the Defensive Player of the Year race. Simply put, he’s off to as good of a start for a pass rusher as you can ask for. Unfortunately for Micah Parsons, there seems to be one team that has been able to consistently take him out of games. That team is the San Francisco 49ers.
Parsons in three career games against San Francisco did not record a sack nor a quarterback hit and only managed one tackle for loss. Most importantly, the 49ers won all three of those games. The Niners under Kyle Shanahan are one of the worst matchups for a player like Micah Parsons, and that’s for a couple of reasons. The first involves the philosophies of both teams. The Cowboys have a defense designed to rush the passer, while the 49ers have an offense based around running the ball to set up the passing game.
More Of Micah’s History
The 49ers are one of the few teams able to keep Micah Parsons from pinning his ears back and rushing the passer. They do not get into third and long situations where Parsons could potentially go to work. The second reason is that San Fran’s personnel allows them to be able to do something that more and more teams have begun doing against the Cowboys, and that’s run right at Micah Parsons. Parsons, for as gifted as he is rushing the passer, is still undersized for his position as an edge rusher. After all, he came out of Penn State as an off-ball linebacker.
With San Francisco having guys like George Kittle and Kyle Juszczyk to assist in the run game, it makes it hard for Parsons to get going and make plays downhill. The last reason is that the 49ers also have something that very teams have and that’s an elite left tackle in Trent Williams. Granted, the Cowboys didn’t line up Micah Parsons over Trent Williams every play, but when they did, in all three games, Trent Williams completely shut him down. Williams is one of the few guys in football capable of handling Parsons’ speed off the edge without being vulnerable to Parsons’ power countermoves.
The Absence Of Micah Parsons
Despite the 49ers getting the better of Micah Parsons throughout his career, not having him on the field is going to make a difference in terms of what the Cowboys plan on doing schematically. The Cowboys have been forced to blitz more in their last two games without Parsons, blitzing Pittsburgh 11 times and Detroit 12 times, with both instances having drastically different results. While the Steelers struggled to pick up Mike Zimmer’s blitzes in Week 5, the Lions shredded Dallas in Week 6 to the tune of 47 points.
Those two games accounted for over 41% of Dallas’ total blitzes for the 2024 season so far. Granted, the Cowboys have traditionally been a more blitz-oriented defense in the Micah Parsons era, finishing at least 13th in blitz percentage or higher in each of his first three seasons, but for 2024 they are now 10th in blitz percentage. Fortunately for them, the 49ers have struggled with picking up blitzes so far this year and if they can get a vintage performance from Mike Zimmer, they could potentially cause problems in the 49ers pass protection.
Unfortunately for the 49ers, missing Brandon Aiyuk and Christian McCaffrey may hurt against a team like Dallas that tends to play more aggressive man-to-man coverage. Aiyuk forced Dallas into more zone coverage looks the last time they played and with him and Jauan Jennings out for this game. Dallas could potentially be able to execute Kansas City’s game plan from last week. That is, if they can stop the run, which unfortunately for Dallas has been their biggest weakness all season. Even if Dallas can have success against Brock Purdy and the passing attack, the 49ers should still be able to run at will versus this Cowboys front seven.
Final Thoughts
The loss of Micah Parsons is going to make things harder for Dallas’ defense even if San Francisco’s gameplan is unlikely to deviate that much from what they’d do with Parsons on the field. If the 49ers can run the ball better than they did last week, it should open the floodgates for them to have a bounce-back offensive performance.
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