The Dallas Cowboys have spoken in hyperbole when bringing up their season-ending 48-32 NFC Super Wild Card Weekend home loss as the conference’s two seed against the seventh-seeded Green Bay Packers, a game in which they trailed 27-0 and did not score until the final play of the first half. 

Team owner and general manager Jerry Jones called the upset defeat “the most painful [in his 35 years owning the team]” because of the “great expectation and hope” for the 2023 Cowboys. Quarterback Dak Prescott, who led the NFL with 36 touchdown passes this season, admitted he flat-out sucked against Green Bay in his postgame media session after he threw two first-half interceptions, including a 64-yard pick six to Packers safety Darnell Savage. He finished with a Cowboys playoff record 403 yards passing while throwing three touchdowns on 41 of 60 passing. Those stats were essentially empty calories in terms of deciding the game’s outcome.

However, one of Dallas’ best players and quotes, All-Pro edge rusher Micah Parsons, vanished into thin air after the game, skipping postgame media availability as well as the team’s locker room cleanout media availability the next day. On Wednesday, Parsons made his first public comments about the loss on his “The Edge with Micah Parsons” podcast. His explanation for going into hiding and ducking immediate accountability about the defeat was simple: his embarrassment about his and the Cowboys’ performance overwhelmed him.   

“It’s that you [the Cowboys] lose the way you do and at home,” Parsons said on his “The Edge with Micah Parsons” podcast on Wednesday. “We had talked about how much [better] we had played at home, how much it stood for us to be at home and then to go like that at home was completely embarrassing and unacceptable. I couldn’t even look at that loss or feel any type of way because of how embarrassed I felt It took me a while to even show my face in public. I disappeared completely.”

Dallas entered the postseason with a 12-5 record, boasting the NFL’s highest-scoring offense (29.9 points per game). Prescott was the first Cowboys quarterback ever to outright lead the NFL in touchdown passes (36), wide receiver CeeDee Lamb led the league in receptions (135) and they possessed the NFL’s only perfect record at home (8-0) that was part of a 16-game winning streak at AT&T Stadium. Parsons earned his third All-Pro selection in as many seasons, his first Second Team nod after two First Team nominations, after leading the NFL in quarterback pressures (103), quarterback pressure rate (21.8%) and pass-rush win rate (35.3%). None of those things, to Parsons’ point, showed up in their faceplant versus the Packers.