Micah Parsons relishes fresh start in Green Bay after enduring 'hardest four months of my life'

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Micah Parsons says he just went through the hardest four months of his life as he feared his contract stalemate with the Dallas Cowboys would stretch into the start of the season.

Now that the matter finally has been settled with a trade to the Green Bay Packers, the superstar pass rusher wants to create a legacy befitting one of the NFL's storied franchises.

One day after the Packers made him the highest-paid non-quarterback in league history, Parsons arrived at Green Bay on Friday, saw the exhibits saluting the franchise's Hall of Famers and imagined his own future.

“I looked on that wall and I saw Brett Favre, I saw Reggie (White), I saw all those legends, and I was like ‘I’ve got to be there,’ “ Parsons said.

The Packers sent two first-round picks and three-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Kenny Clark to Dallas. They’re giving Parsons a four-year, $188 million contract with $136 million guaranteed.

Parsons gives Green Bay arguably its best pass rusher since White. Parsons invited comparisons by including clips of White in a video he posted on X after the trade was announced.

“I just looked at him like somebody who won,” said Parsons, who marveled at the “outrageous” statistics White compiled. “I think I can do that, too. I think I can do anything I put my mind to.”

Parsons will wear a new number.

At Dallas, Parsons had No. 11, which wide receiver Jayden Reed wears for Green Bay. Parsons said he plans to wear No. 1, becoming the first Packer to do so since Curly Lambeau from 1925-26.

Although Green Bay has reached the playoffs with the NFL’s youngest roster each of the last two years, the Packers lacked star power and a consistent pass rush. Parsons provides both.

The 26-year-old has 52 1/2 career sacks, including at least 12 in each of his four seasons.

“I just know from having to game plan against him, that is something that keeps you up at night when you’re going against a player of his caliber,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said.

Parsons was available only because negotiations with the Cowboys had broken down.

“I would say these last four months have probably been the hardest four months of my life,” Parsons said.

Joining the Packers is a full-circle moment for Parsons, who played running back for a team called the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Packers as a kid. Packers offensive tackle Rasheed Walker, a former Penn State teammate, offered positive reports about playing for this franchise.

The timing of this move is similar to the Oakland Raiders’ trade of edge rusher Khalil Mack to Chicago just before the 2018 season. The Packers also had sought Mack at the time, and general manager Brian Gutekunst believed afterward they might have entered that pursuit a little too late.

“I don’t think it would’ve changed the outcome of that back then, but I felt like if you’re going to be on something like this, you’re going to have to be in early,” Gutekunst said.

Gutekunst made sure the Packers were in it from the start this time, though he was skeptical Parsons would truly become available.

“The chances of these things happenings are pretty slim,” Gutekunst said. “I think that was my mindset the whole time, was keep the conversations going because of the uniqueness of the player."

Gutekunst said a framework for this deal was in place well before Wednesday. Even then, he didn’t have his hopes up.

“There’s a ton of times when you go through these conversations and you have frameworks and structures of how you’re going to do this and it just doesn’t come to fruition,” he said.

This time, the deal got done.

Parsons’ acquisition and his big contract bring the Packers some potential short-term and long-term consequences.

Losing Clark and allowing defensive tackle T.J. Slaton to sign with the Cincinnati Bengals in free agency leaves Green Bay short on depth at that position. The money devoted to Parsons and quarterback Jordan Love, who signed a four-year, $220 million extension last year, could eventually cause salary cap complications.

“There’s no doubt when you acquire a player like this, who’s going to take up that much of the cap, that you’re going to have to make some choices,” Gutekunst said. “You always do."

The price the Packers paid for Parsons makes him that much more intent on proving his worth.

“I’d be a fool to not think there isn’t expectations or there isn’t pressure in the position that I’m stepping into,” Parsons said. “But then again, that’s a blessing in itself. That means that they believed in me that much."

AP Pro Football Writer Rob Maaddi contributed to this report.

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Green Bay Packers Micah Parsons speaks at his introductory news conference Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Green Bay Packers Micah Parsons speaks at his introductory news conference Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Green Bay Packers Micah Parsons leaves after his introductory news conference Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Green Bay Packers Micah Parsons speaks at his introductory news conference Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Green Bay Packers Micah Parsons speaks at his introductory news conference Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Green Bay Packers Micah Parsons speaks at his introductory news conference Friday, Aug. 29, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

FILE - Dallas Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons (11) walks on the sideline during an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Brian Westerholt, File)

FILE - Dallas Cowboys defensive end Micah Parsons (11) rushes during an NFL football game against the New York Giants, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Matt Patterson, File)

FILE - Dallas Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons (11) sacks Carolina Panthers quarterback Bryce Young (9) during an NFL football game on Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Rusty Jones, File)

FILE - Dallas Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons (11) celebrates after sacking New York Giants quarterback Drew Lock during an NFL football game in Arlington, Texas, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Miron, File)

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Former Cypriot President George Vassiliou, a successful businessman who helped to energize his divided island's economy and set it on the road to European Union membership, has died. He was 94.

Vassiliou died Wednesday after being hospitalized on Jan. 6 for a respiratory infection. Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides praised Vassiliou as a leader who became synonymous with the country's economic prosperity, social progress and push toward modernization.

“Cyprus has lost a universal citizen who broadened our homeland's international imprint,” Christodoulides said in a written statement.

His wife Androulla, a lawyer who twice served as a European commissioner, posted on X in the early hours Wednesday that her companion of 59 years “slipped away quietly in our arms” in hospital.

“It's difficult to say farewell to a man who was a superb husband and father, a man full of kindness and love for the country and its people,” she wrote.

When he became president in 1988, Vassiliou lifted hopes that a peace deal with the island's breakaway Turkish Cypriots was possible after more than a decade of off-again, on-again talks. He swiftly relaunched stalled reunification negotiations with Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, but they ended at an impasse that continues today.

Cyprus was split into an internationally recognized Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974, when Turkey invaded the island after a coup aimed at uniting it with Greece. A Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence nine years later was recognized only by Turkey.

During an interview in 1989, one year into his five-year term as president, Vassiliou said: "The only dangerous thing for the Cyprus issue is to remain ... in a vacuum, forgotten and with no one taking any interest."

But Vassiliou succeeded on many other fronts, using his skills as a successful entrepreneur to modernize and expand his county’s economy, even though he had been raised by parents who were pro-communist.

Vassiliou was born in Cyprus in 1931 to two doctors who were activists and volunteered their services to the communist forces during the civil war that engulfed Greece in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

With the defeat of the communists in Greece in 1949, the Vassiliou family moved to Hungary and later Uzbekistan.

George Vassiliou initially studied medicine in Geneva and Vienna, but he later switched to economics, earning a doctorate from the University of Economics in Budapest.

After a brief stint doing marketing in London, Vassiliou returned to Cyprus in 1962, and he began a successful business career that made him a millionaire. He founded the Middle East Market Research Bureau, a consultancy business that grew to have offices in 30 countries in the Middle East, South Africa, eastern and central Europe.

In 1987, Vassilou was elected president of Cyprus as an independent entrepreneur who also was supported by the island's powerful communist party AKEL, which his father had one been a prominent member of.

Vassiliou bucked the staid political culture of the time by making the presidency more accessible to the public and visiting government offices and schools. That prompted some criticism that he was turning the presidency into a marketing pulpit.

"I consider it the president’s obligation to come in contact with the civil service," Vassiliou told Greek state TV. "I call this communication with youth. Some call it marketing. ... I call it the proper execution of the president's mission."

He also pushed through key reforms, including imposing a sales tax while slashing income taxes, streamlining a cumbersome civil service, establishing the first Cyprus university, and abolishing a state monopoly in electronic media. To make sure the world better understood the Cyprus peace process, he widely expanded a network of press offices at Cypriot diplomatic missions.

Through his tenure, the island's per capita gross domestic product almost doubled, culminating in possibly his most notable achievement as president — applying for full membership to the European Union, a goal achieved 13 years later.

Vassiliou lost the presidency in 1993 to Glafcos Clerides, who appointed his rival as Cyprus' chief negotiator with the EU in 1998. A decade later, Vassiliou headed a Greek Cypriot team negotiating EU matters during reunification talks. He remained politically active, founding a party of his own and being elected to the Cypriot legislature in 1996.

He authored several books on EU issues and Cypriot politics; was a member of several international bodies, including the Shimon Peres Institute of Peace; and received honors and decorations from countries such as France, Italy, Austria, Portugal and Egypt.

Apart from his wife, Vassiliou is also survived by two daughters and a son.

FILE -Democratic Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton, left, meets with President George Vassiliou of Cyprus at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, Aug. 9, 1992. (AP Photo/Mario Cabrera, File)

FILE -Cyprus President George Vassiliou, left, smiles as his son Evelthon, 17, is introduced to the daughter of Massachusetts Governor and Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, Kara, 19, at the Statehouse in Boston on Aug. 3, 1988 as Dukakis, second from right looks on, during a visit by the Cyprus President to Boston. (AP Photo/Carol Francavilla, File)