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Micah Parsons heard the chanting.

He embraced it.

He even encouraged it.

“Thank you, Jerry!” the crowd at Lambeau Field yelled repeatedly Thursday night after the Green Bay Packers’ 27-18 win over the Washington Commanders.

The chant was addressed toward someone who was not there — Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones, who traded the 26-year-old star linebacker to Green Bay one week before the start of the season after a lengthy contract dispute.

The Packers sent two first-round picks and defensive tackle Kenny Clark to Dallas as part of the deal, but the chanting fans on hand at 1265 Lombardi Ave. for “Thursday Night Football” definitely seemed to be of the opinion that their beloved team had won the trade.

“I’m gonna lay out for a minute because this crowd has something to say,” Prime Video‘s Charissa Thompson said as she and her “TNF Nightcap” co-hosts sat with Parsons on the field ahead of a postgame interview. “I know you guys know what they’re saying. They’re saying, ‘Thank you, Jerry!’”

Parsons was shown bobbing his head and swaying his shoulders to the rhythm of the chant. He and Prime analyst Ryan Fitzpatrick, who was sitting directly to Parsons’ right, could be seen lifting their arms in an effort to further stir up the crowd.

Not that these fans needed any encouragement. The cheers were loud and often during the 10-minute interview, including other chants such as “Mi-cah!” and “Go, Pack, Go!” and “Let’s Go, Micah!”

Jones was a good sport when asked about the matter Friday during a radio interview.

“Well, I’ll tell you, the way they’re playing, the way Green Bay is playing, I’m all for them enjoying and chanting anything that they really want to [say],” Jones said on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas-Fort Worth.

Jones added: “If you make a move on a top player, this shouldn’t surprise anybody that we would have that kind of reaction from their fan base, the other team’s fan base, or, for that matter, our fan base in general. … I knew that if I got to make this trade, that this would be there.”

Parsons was selected at No. 12 overall by the Cowboys in the 2021 draft. He has made the Pro Bowl in each of his first four seasons, registering 52.5 sacks during that span.

His relationship with the Cowboys — or at least with Jones — soured going into the fifth and final year of Parsons’ rookie deal as negotiations for an extension stalled. Parsons demanded a trade Aug. 1 and got his wish weeks later. He and the Packers then agreed on a four-year, $188-million contract that makes him the highest paid non-quarterback in NFL history.

In a limited number of snaps during his first two games with Green Bay (30 in a Week 1 win over the Detroit Lions, 47 against the Commanders), Parsons has 1.5 sacks, three quarterback pressures, one quarterback hurry and three tackles.

He will return to AT&T Stadium with his new team in just a few weeks when the Packers play the Cowboys in Arlington, Texas, Sept. 28.

“Obviously, you know, my family and everyone’s looking forward to it, but I’m just gonna let the action talk,” Parsons said. “It’s just going to be funny because all my friends are there … so just going against those guys, it’s going to be heartbreaking. But, damn, I’m excited for the matchup.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Micah Parsons is headed to the Green Bay Packers after a blockbuster trade on Thursday, leaving the Dallas Cowboys following a lengthy contract dispute.

The two-time All-Pro edge rusher confirmed the deal in a text to The Associated Press. The Packers also announced the deal.

A person with knowledge of the details said Parsons and the Packers have agreed on a record-setting $188 million, four-year contract that includes $136 million guaranteed. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the trade hasn’t been announced.

Parsons becomes the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history.

“I never wanted this chapter to end, but not everything was in my control,” Parsons wrote in a statement he posted on X. “My heart has always been here, and still is. Through it all, I never made any demands. I never asked for anything more than fairness. I only asked that the person I trust to negotiate my contract be part of the process.”

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones declined to discuss Parsons’ deal with agent David Mulugheta. Instead, Jones spoke directly to Parsons and insisted they had agreed on the parameters of a new contract.

The Cowboys are receiving two first-round picks and veteran defensive tackle Kenny Clark for Parsons, a person with knowledge of the details told the AP. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the teams haven’t released the terms.

The 26-year-old Parsons has 52½ sacks, recording at least 12 in each of his four seasons while making the Pro Bowl each year.

Parsons provides a huge boost for a franchise that has reached the playoffs five of the past six years but hasn’t made it to the NFL championship game since Aaron Rodgers led them to their fourth Super Bowl title 15 years ago.

Parsons bolsters a defense that was inconsistent at getting to opposing quarterbacks last season, when the Packers went 11-7 and lost to Philadelphia in the NFC wild-card round. The Packers had 45 sacks last season to tie for eighth place in the NFL, but more than half of those sacks came in just four games.

In seven of their 17 games, the Packers had no more than one sack.

Green Bay ranked 16th in pressure rate, which calculates the number of hurries, knockdowns and sacks for each team divided by an opponent’s drop-back attempts.

Now, the Packers add one of the game’s elite pass rushers while the Cowboys lose their best player because of a power struggle with Jones.

Even with Parsons, who missed four games because of injury last season, Dallas finished 28th in defense and the team went 7-10. The Cowboys have a healthy Dak Prescott returning but this is a devastating blow for the defense.

The Packers haven’t had anyone get 12 sacks in a season since Za’Darius Smith had 12½ in 2020.

Packers general manager Brian Gutekunst spoke Wednesday about the philosophy of taking a “big swing” to land a superstar.

“I think every opportunity that’s out there to help your football team, we’ve always taken a look at try to see how it affects us right now, how does it affect us in the future and make the best decision we can,” Gutekunst said. “Sometimes we’ve been right, sometimes we’re wrong. Sometimes we’ve taken risks that really worked out for us. Sometimes it didn’t.

“Sometimes we didn’t take risks, and we look back and wish we would have and sometimes, you know, as (former general manager) Ted (Thompson) used to say, you know, God helps those that can’t help themselves a little bit sometimes. So sometimes the best deals you make are the ones you don’t, you know. And so you just kind of, I think you weigh everything, and you weigh what is in the moment and what is in the future as well.”

The Packers, who once signed Reggie White in free agency, just took their biggest swing in decades. White helped a Green Bay team led by Brett Favre win a Super Bowl and reach another on his way to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

When Angel City selected Alyssa Thompson with the No. 1 pick in the NWSL draft two years ago, she had two choices: take what the team offered or pass up the chance to play in the NWSL.

But last month, when the team came to Thompson and her sister, Gisele, with contract extensions, their choices were almost unlimited.

“They both have attracted considerable attention from multiple Champions League clubs,” said Takumi Jeannin, the players’ agent. “Pretty much every top team in Europe showed interest at some point.”

The Thompsons chose Angel City anyway.

“We’re very committed to Angel City,” Alyssa said. “We love being here and playing in front of our friends and family. Angel City is putting a lot of effort and resources into their players and the team shows their commitment to the future and developing us.

“So I felt like Angel City would be is a really good place for us to continue growing.”

In doing so the sisters, L.A. natives, chose community over continental stardom. They chose building a club at home over contributing to one overseas and chose to reward the people who gave them a chance rather than taking a chance on people who promised rewards.

That vote of confidence — and it’s a massive one — comes at a key moment for the team. Over its first three seasons Angel City lost more games than it won and conceded more goals than it scored. So as it enters its fourth season with a new majority owner in Willow Bay and a new sporting director in Mark Parsons, the team is looking for a new direction as well.

“This is Angel City 2.0,” Parsons said. “The foundation for having real soccer vision alignment is loud and clear and it’s perfect timing for it.”

Perfect for a couple of reasons. First, because Parsons is rebuilding with patience and purpose. Turning around a soccer team is a lot like turning around a cruise ship in that it has to be done slowly and with care. So while Angel City has added five players this winter and re-signed five more, it is willing to wait until deep into the season to sign a coach — it opened training camp last month with an interim manager in Sam Laity — if that’s what it takes to find the right person.

“We can’t make decisions based on emotion,” said Matt Wade, the team’s assistant general manager. “We have to be rational, thoughtful, intentional and make decisions that are aligned to a strategy that we’ve created.

“We would much rather get it [right] than get it wrong quickly.”

However the team has assured the foundation that new coach will build on will include two of the most dynamic young players in the U.S. Alyssa Thompson, 20, a forward and one of the fastest players in the NWSL, has already played 53 matches for Angel City and, in 2023, became the second-youngest women to play for the U.S. in a World Cup. Gisele, 19, helped the U.S. finish third in last summer’s U-20 World Cup and has already been called into training camp with the senior national team twice.

On Monday, Parsons added to that, sending $300,000 in transfer funds to Bay FC for defender Savy King, the second pick in last season’s NWSL draft. Three days before that, he signed former Japanese World Cup veteran Miyabi Moriya.

The second reason the timing is right for Angel City is because the Thompsons’ decision to stay through 2028 bucks a growing trend in women’s soccer. Last month Naomi Girma, Alyssa Thompson’s World Cup teammate, became soccer’s first million-dollar woman when she left San Diego and the NWSL to join Chelsea of England’s Women’s Super League for a record $1.1-million transfer fee. In the last two weeks NWSL MVPs Kerolin and Crystal Dunn and Gotham defender Jenna Nighswonger also left the NWSL for Europe, bringing to 11 the number of USWNT players on the continent.

“They’re believing in the vision,” Parsons said of the Thompsons. “They’ve believed in what we’ve shared and we have to repay that.”

That vision includes more than just signing players. A week before the contract extensions for the Thompsons were announced, Angel City unveiled its multimillion-dollar performance center, the largest and most opulent in the NWSL. Under the new ownership group headed by Bay, the dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and her husband, Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger, Angel City is also investing is analytics, technology, even a sensory deprivation tank to accelerate recovery from games and training.

Then there’s Parsons, who didn’t come cheap after winning six trophies in as many seasons as coach of the Portland Thorns. But perhaps his biggest success there was in developing teenage players such as Olivia Moultrie, Ellie Carpenter and Sophia Smith at a time when teens were rare in the NWSL. Angel City will have at least four, including Gisele Thompson, this season and two 20-year-olds in King and Alyssa Thompson. Parsons believes that track record is another reason the Thompsons decided to stay.

“You’ve got to do it the right way and you’ve got to be there, you’ve got to support [them],” said Parsons, 38, who joined Angel City three weeks ago. “You’ve got to understand with young players there’s ups and downs. They are young. They’ve got to go through stuff on the field and learn how to deal with it.”

Keeping them also required significant investment from Bay, Iger and team president Julie Uhrman. Alyssa’s first Angel City contract, according to her agent, was worth $1 million over three seasons, making it the richest in the club’s short history. Gisele signed last winter, the day before her 18th birthday, for a reported $525,000 over three years, plus bonuses and stipends. The extensions, both sides said, included raises that likely pushed the combined value close to $2 million.

For the Thompsons, it was the commitment that counted.

“Angel City is just really committed to the future and I think they’re committed to us,” Alyssa said. “That’s a big factor in signing with the club. We really want to win and help bring home a championship to L.A.”

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

When Willow Bay and her husband, Disney CEO Bob Iger, became controlling owners of Angel City last July, they inherited a women’s soccer team that had lost more games than it had won, had fewer playoff appearances than it had suspensions from the league and would end the year by parting ways with its second general manager and second head coach in three seasons.

So on Wednesday, when Bay cut the ribbon on the team’s massive new performance center at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, it was with the hope that would mark the start of Angel City’s turnaround as well.

“This is the vision of this team that we’re helping support and execute,” said Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, who joined her husband in investing $50 million in cash for the team to expand its budget and ease its losses. “It was very clear that we needed to invest in football operations here and support the leadership and support the players and making sure they had all the resources they needed to build a winning culture.”

The Angel City training center comes complete with a modern weight room.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

The opening of the performance center comes six days after Angel City announced the hiring of Mark Parsons, one of the most successful coaches in NWSL history, as its sporting director. Parsons said the new training facility will be a big help in recruiting women to come play for his new team.

“If I can get them here and get them to walk around, then it’s going to be very hard for people not wanting to be in this environment,” he said. “When I think of Angel City and why I want to be here, what has started with an ownership group and investors to build a brand that is world-leading, how female athletes should be supported, knowing the ambition now and putting in a performance center that no other women’s sports team has in the world, you’ve kind of touched everything.”

The performance center is part of a 9-acre training base Angel City inherited from the Rams when the NFL team moved to Woodland Hills in August. It is the largest and most modern in the NWSL history, boasting a 5,400-square-foot gym, three locker rooms, a film room, a medical treatment and hydrotherapy area, and a children’s playroom, among other things. There is one full soccer pitch and an adjoining half field.

It’s a big step up from the last three seasons when Angel City worked out of a pair of temporary trailers in a far corner of the CLU campus and used a weight room that wasn’t actually a room, but a huge tent. Angel City would not say exactly how much it spent on refurbishing the facility but said it was a “multimillion-dollar custom rebuild.”

The move into the new facility comes at a time when the league is adjusting to radical new rules that have altered the building of rosters. Last September the NWSL became the first major professional league in the U.S. to ditch the draft, which bound players to the team that selected them. The new collective-bargaining agreement between the league and the players’ association also allows for out-of-contract players to negotiate with every team in the league and gives players the right to block trades to teams they don’t want to play for.

As a result, signing players now means recruiting them first.

Angel City FC general manager Mark Parsons speaks during the ribbon cutting ceremony to unveil the new Angel City training center in Thousand Oaks.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

“My job has just got much, much more easy with this facility,” Parsons said. “A few more clubs over the last few years have been investing. [But] this is unlike nowhere else. I’m excited to be a part of an organization that cares that much.

“But I’m also excited that my skill set just got a bit easier, because everyone’s going to want to be here.”

Christen Press, a two-time World Cup champion and the first player the team signed, said the facility will help make Angel City a destination.

“For the last three years, when we go as a club and talk to top players in the world, we didn’t have this facility to offer,” she said. “It’s a huge part of our day-to-day experience as an athlete and it matters.”

Whether it will be enough to turn around a team that lost a franchise-record 13 games last season, finishing 12th in the 14-team NWSL, remains to be seen. In the last month Matt Wade, the assistant general manager, and technical director Mark Wilson agreed to a one-year contract extension along with Press, added French forward Julie Dufour and Australian defender Alanna Kennedy, and signed Mississippi State midfielder Macey Hodge.

Still, the team will begin preseason training Wednesday without a permanent replacement for coach Becki Tweed and with Parsons just a week into his job replacing general manager Angela Mangano Hucles.

A look at the locker room inside Angel City FC’s training facility.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

Parsons said the team has signed Sam Laity, who formerly worked in Seattle and Houston, to manage the club on an interim basis as he searches for a permanent coach.

“Getting the right person is the priority,” Parsons said. “If the right person is available sooner rather than later, fine. If we have to wait for that right person and they’re not available until the summer, then we’re open to that as well.”

For the time being, Bay is promising to be patient and supportive. The results, however, must follow eventually.

“Bob and I were very clear about investing the resources in this team and the people who lead and manage it. And most certainly the women who play for it,” she said.

But, she added, “we know how important it is to do our best to bring a championship to this city.”

Richard Parsons, the executive dubbed “Captain Emergency” for his record of stabilizing ailing companies such as AOL Time Warner, Citigroup Inc. and Dime Savings Bank of New York, has died. He was 76.

Parsons died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. The cause of death was bone cancer, the New York Times reported, citing Ronald S. Lauder, a friend. Parsons was named chairman of CBS Corp. in September 2018 and resigned less than one month later, citing complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.

Parsons was named chief executive officer of AOL Time Warner in 2002 after the $124-billion merger of the dial-up internet provider and the largest entertainment and media company started to fall apart. Just before he took over, following the surprise departure of CEO Gerald Levin, the newly merged entity posted a record loss of $54.2 billion as the value of its stock sank amid the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

“My biggest dream for this company is to restore it — to bring Time Warner back to the position that I think it once had and, even better than that, to make it the greatest company in the media and entertainment world,” said Parsons, who was named chairman in 2003.

Parsons, a tall Black man with a gentle management style whom some compared to a teddy bear, removed AOL from the company’s name, changed key managers and shored up its finances by laying off employees and selling noncore units. Two years into his repair job, Fortune listed Parsons at No. 23 on the Power 25, its list of the most powerful people in business — just above Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs.

By the time Parsons resigned as Time Warner Inc.’s CEO at the end of 2007, the firm was financially stable. He stayed on as chairman until 2009, the year his successor as CEO, Jeffrey Bewkes, spun off AOL from the parent company.

The company later was acquired by AT&T Inc. and today is known as Warner Bros. Discovery.

Parsons, who joined the board of Citicorp in the 1990s with the help of philanthropist Laurance Rockefeller, went on to become chairman of its successor firm, Citigroup Inc., in 2009, assuming responsibility for a too-big-to-fail bank in the grip of the Great Recession.

He brought with him vital know-how about how government worked, having served as a legal advisor for New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in Albany and in the White House after Rockefeller became Gerald Ford’s vice president. Parsons used that experience to negotiate a way for New York-based Citigroup to avoid the bankruptcy fate of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. The government took a financial stake in the bank and in 2010 sold off its final holdings for a $12-billion profit.

In February 2011, President Barack Obama named Parsons one of his outside economic advisors.

In 2014, when Donald Sterling, owner of the National Basketball Assn.’s Los Angeles Clippers franchise, became embroiled in a scandal for making racist remarks, Parsons was again brought in to steady a horrendous situation. After Sterling was banned from the NBA, Parsons, who played basketball while attending the University of Hawaii, agreed to become the team’s interim CEO. Several months later, Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft Corp. CEO, purchased the Clippers for $2 billion.

Earlier in his career, Parsons, a lawyer by training, was picked to be chief operating officer of the troubled Dime Savings Bank of New York by CEO Harry W. Albright Jr., a former Nelson Rockefeller aide. Dime was a client of the law firm Parsons worked for at the time. Starting with bad debt of more than $1 billion, Parsons, who became Dime’s CEO in 1990, worked with regulators to reduce the debt to $335 million. That was a prelude to merging it with Anchor Savings in 1994, the year before Levin recruited him to become president of Time Warner based partly on his board membership.

“People wondered what I was doing,” Levin told Bloomberg Businessweek for a 2011 profile of Parsons. “But I was confident, given his style and his approach and his people skills. And I was proven right.”

Richard Dean Parsons was born on April 4, 1948, in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Lorenzo Parsons, a Sperry Rand electrical technician, and the former Isabelle Judd, a homemaker. One of five children, he grew up in South Ozone Park, Queens, near a marshy area that would become JFK Airport. He did well in school, skipping grades in elementary and high school. He left the University of Hawaii a few credits short of a degree but was admitted to Albany Law School in New York.

After graduating at the top of his class in 1971, he went to work for Gov. Rockefeller and followed him to Washington.

After President Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976, Parsons worked for the Rockefeller family for a year, then joined the politically connected New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler, where his clients included Nelson Rockefeller’s widow.

After his rescue stints at Dime, Time Warner and Citigroup, Parsons became an advisor at Providence Equity Partners, where he worked part-time reviewing potential buyouts of media firms.

In 2016, after a period on the board, he became chairman of the $4-billion Rockefeller Foundation, capping his connections with the family, who had employed his grandfather as a groundskeeper at the family estate just north of New York.

CBS, based in New York, hired Parsons as its interim chairman in September 2018, filling a role vacated by Leslie Moonves after he was accused of sexual harassment.

Parsons and his wife, the former Laura Ann Bush, had three children: Gregory, Leslie and Rebecca.

Oster writes for Bloomberg.