Thread: Rosenhaus, T.O. will play in 2011............

What a tease this is gonna be. Who's gonna be the team to take a couple of million dollar gamble that he's recovered enough at age 37 to have another year like last one? I just hope it's not us.

Drama-filled Owens is good for the NFL

By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! SportsJun 28, 3:03 pm EDT






Terrell Owens(notes) will be fully recovered from April ACL surgery, or at least that’s what his agent, Drew Rosenhaus told ESPN on Tuesday.
Of course, Rosenhaus once stood in T.O.’s driveway during one of Owens’ dustups with the Philadelphia Eagles and shouted “next question!” to nearly every question.
And please don’t confuse this with the time Owens addressed the media in his driveway while doing sit-ups without a shirt. Or the time Owens had to hold a news conference because a police report suggested he may have attempted suicide even though he hadn’t.
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A tearful Terrell Owens defends Tony Romo following a playoff loss in January 2009.
(AP Photo)

So, really, who knows what the future holds for the 36-year-old wide receiver. He may be back with the Cincinnati Bengals next season. He may be out longer. He may even be done for good. “He is a legendary healer,” Rosenhaus said. “He comes back from injury faster than anybody I’ve ever seen.”

Rosenhaus also tried to refute a report that Owens injured his knee while filming a VH1 reality show. That bit of news isn’t worth dismissing yet, though, because the agent wouldn’t say how he got hurt. Besides, wouldn’t that be the most fitting way for Owens to sustain an injury?

The man is equal parts genetic freak, world-class athlete and dedicated workout maven. So naturally it would be the non-athletic world, that he tackled with the same ferocity as NFL secondaries, that would do him in.
Here’s hoping Owens will return to football, 100 percent, because the NFL is a more colorful, comical and, indeed, more exciting place with him in it. Owens may be occasionally infuriating, but he’s always interesting.


He’s enjoyed a career ride that transformed him from obscure, small-college NFL draft pick (third round out of Tennessee-Chattanooga to the San Francisco 49ers) to astounding fame, crazy soap operas and incredible performances.

You may remember the driveway sit-ups, or the “black-on-black crime” involving Donovan McNabb(notes) or the teary “that’s my quarterback” defense of Tony Romo(notes), or the suspensions, the supposed fights, the real fights, the contract disputes, the non-overdose, the celebrating on the Dallas Cowboys star (pre-playing for the Cowboys, of course), the “Desperate Housewives” skit scandal (way overblown, by the way), the battles with Bill Parcells, Andy Reid, Steve Mariucci, Hugh Douglas. Obviously, we could go on.
Put it this way, Parcells was so sick of dealing with Owens he wouldn’t say his name, referring to T.O. merely as “the player.” And this is a coach who handled Lawrence Taylor.

Here’s what’s worth noting also though: the 153 career touchdown receptions (second all time), the 15,934 career reception yards (second all time), the five All-Pro selections and the gutty, return-from-injury, 9-catch, 122-yard performance in Super Bowl XXXIX.

[Jason Cole: NFL will be just fine without Terrell Owens]

The guy can really play. For much of his career it’s tough to claim he wasn’t at least one of the top three receivers in the league, something that will make him a Hall of Fame debate point in the future. Even last season he caught a very respectable nine TD passes in 14 games for the Bengals.

Perhaps most telling was the propensity of quarterbacks to have career years when they had the luxury of throwing it to No. 81.
In San Francisco, Jeff Garcia(notes) went to three Pro Bowls from 2000-02 then was on five different teams in five seasons. In Philadelphia, Donovan McNabb threw 31 touchdowns and finally got to the Super Bowl and then when Owens left never passed for more than 23 scores again. In Dallas Tony Romo enjoyed three stellar seasons that turned him into a star with Owens by his side. No one is certain he’ll ever be as good.

Owens may be known as a quarterback killer, but usually not before he became a quarterback maker.
“I think that’s what’s always missing; no one ever talks about that,” Owens said a couple years back. “I think sometimes those things tend to get overshadowed because a lot of criticism and a lot of things they want to talk about other than what I bring to the table.”
All true except it was Owens who made sure everyone was talking about those other things.



T.O. is always about promoting himself, a goal that juxtaposes with a childhood where he came up shy and poor in little Alexander City, Ala. He was odd socially, which is easy to understand when his life experience includes not knowing his father until, one day when he was 11, he discovered the man lived across the street from him, ignoring him the entire time.


Terrell Owens had 983 yards and 9 TD catches last season.
(US Presswire)


“My upbringing made for underdeveloped social skills,” Owens wrote in his 2004 autobiography “Catch This!”
In the NFL Owens has refused to be ignored, on or off the field. He caught touchdown after touchdown and then danced like he’d never been there before. He made things look easy on the field and made life off of it hard for anyone with whom he was feuding.
He was a one-man circus and while it’s made him a household name and assured a post-football career either in reality TV, as a budding tell-it-like-it-is analyst or both, it’s clouded the appreciation for him as a player.

“One thing they can never take away; the things I do on the football field,” he said.
Maybe Owens returns full force to the field, the way Rosenhaus is predicting. Maybe he’s never the same or never even back in uniform.
With T.O. you never know, only that when it goes down it will be impossible to ignore. The man does everything over the top, in his own unique manner. It’s why suffering a possibly career-ending injury while filming a reality show is so Terrell Owens, it just can’t be dismissed.

League Would Be Fine Without Owens



By Jason Cole, Yahoo! SportsJun 28, 4:58 pm EDT

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There are many great things about Terrell Owens(notes), from his athletic ability to his sense of theater. As a football player, however, Owens has never reached the essence of excellence.
At this point, he’ll probably never get there.
Agent Drew Rosenhaus addresses the media following the Philadelphia Eagles' suspension of Terrell Owens in 2005.
(AP Photo)

The debate over whether Owens will return this season after quietly having ACL surgery in April is largely irrelevant. Sure, some desperate team might take a chance on Owens, particularly as that yet-to-be-determined organization sorts through all its options once the lockout ends. But in Hollywood terms, Owens has become that once-fascinating star who has faded into “special guest star status.” He’s like Shannen Doherty or Christian Slater or all those has-beens who rotated into the various Quinn Martin Productions; people who seemed headed for something great until it was discovered that there simply wasn’t much to them.

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That’s where Owens, who has worked his way down the NFL food chain through the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals the past two years, is in his career. In five to 10 years, he’s going to be sitting next to Jose Canseco on the Flavor Flav Talk Show, discussing his upcoming MMA bout.
You can hear it now rolling off Owens’ tongue: “For me, it’s all about the love of competition. That’s what I was always about, competing. Working my tail off every day to destroy that guy across from me. That’s what I’m going to do in this bout next Saturday in Trenton, New Jersey.”
For all the attention Owens has received and all the stats he’s produced (his 153 touchdowns are tied with Randy Moss(notes), appropriately, for second place all time), Owens has been a terrible football player in the ways that are most important. He’s a loser and a whiner, a bad teammate whose selfish antics and diva qualities destroyed teams. There’s a reason Owens has played for five clubs in his career, even getting traded in his prime by the San Francisco 49ers. Time and again, Owens has put his own balky ego ahead of everything and everyone.
[Dan Wetzel: Drama-filled Terrell Owens is good for the NFL]
Owens’ relationship with his various quarterbacks is the most telling. He once intimated that Jeff Garcia(notes) was gay, ripped apart Donovan McNabb(notes) and became suspicious of Tony Romo(notes). In Buffalo, he blamed the lack of an effective quarterback. The only reason he didn’t get into it with Drew Bledsoe in Dallas or Cincinnati’s Carson Palmer(notes) is that neither one of those guys cared enough to spar with him. He managed to work it out with Steve Young in San Francisco only because Young had the credibility.
Even Young, the Hall of Fame quarterback who tries frequently to explain T.O. to the masses as an ESPN analyst, struggles to make sense of Owens. Young’s earnest attempts and his intellectual curiosity about what makes Owens tick are commendable, but the menagerie of words that he uses ignores one simple credo: It’s not supposed to be that hard.
If it takes a case study for a guy to be a good teammate, that means he’s not a good teammate. Either you know how to fit into the network of a team or you don’t. That’s why Owens is so bad, so undeserving of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which is where he’ll probably end up. This has nothing to do with his histrionics. It has nothing to do with preening on the Cowboy star or grabbing the pom-poms or signing the football in Seattle. All of that stuff may be a sign of selfishness, but it wasn’t damaging. It was actually fun. It created debates and arguments over proper behavior, which made for good entertainment.
What Owens did that really hurt was when he wasn’t man enough to go to Romo and Jason Witten(notes), and figure out how to make the Cowboys’ offense better in 2008. Instead, he went to other teammates and coaches, and complained that Romo and Witten were designing secret plays behind his back. Worse, after a loss in Pittsburgh, he second-guessed Romo about a critical play that turned into an interception, even though there was no way Romo could have gotten the ball to Owens.

Terrell Owens has had plenty of TD celebrations during his career.
(Getty Images)


Owens’ behavior, such as when he upbraided McNabb for being sick at the end of their Super Bowl loss to the New England Patriots, was divisive, not constructive. He made people want to shut him out, not join hands with him to do battle against an opponent. He made teammates and coaches go to management to get rid of him. In Dallas, owner Jerry Jones had enough of players and coaches saying Owens had to go and he finally cut him.
That’s telling because Jones, like Owens, is a man who is all about theater. Jones likes drama because it keeps people watching. As the saying goes, the Cowboys are a great story when they win and they’re a better story when they lose.
For today, Owens is a great story again because so many people are wondering what’s going to happen next. Really, it’s not that hard to figure out. If Owens plays, he’ll put up stats that’ll make it look like he can play, but his team will go nowhere. In critical moments, he’ll do what he did last year for the Bengals, such as stop running on pass routes or refuse to get hit even if it means picking up a pass interference penalty or breaking up a possible interception.
Owens’ attempts to transition to reality TV are perfect. As with most people, his time will run out because he’s a one-note character. Here’s one 45-second scene from a reality show that summed up his football career:
Owens was walking down the street with his girlfriend at the time when she appeared to get fed up with him. As they approached her Los Angeles-area apartment, she let herself in the security gate and closed it before he could come in. Owens quietly tried to convince her to let him in. No dice.

The look on her face was telling, the combination of weariness and annoyance, just like the look on the faces of his teammates and coaches throughout his career. In response, Owens shot a dumbfounded expression, as if he was trying to say, “Hey, what did I do?”
Nothing, T.O., you did nothing. And that’s the point

I don't beleive he can play this year. But, if anyone can comeback at 38 years old and coming off a knee surgery, it's TO. The guy does work hard despite his reputation as diva

T.O. can come to Chicago on one condition: he gets initiated like a gang member and goes out like a gang member. Either way he takes a beating.

T.O. is cancer in a locker room. That's all there is to it. He is past his physical prime, and I just don't see how he is going to be able to hold up much longer. He was only his way to another 1,000-1,100+ yard season before he sustain his injury to his meniscus (which, interestingly enough, was the same injury that Cutler sustained in the NFC Championship Game that some people are still complaining about).