His name is Terrell Owens, a gifted wide receiver who has fully jeopardized a once monumental career before it plunged drastically due to his psychotic behavior.
It’s not very often that we witness a mentally disturbed athlete, especially one with much talent and marveled deeds, unless he created T.O. drama and disrupted an entire team with his frequent outbursts and silliness.
For the first time in a problematic career, he won’t have the popcorn ready, still unemployed and unwanted, as most franchises believe he’s more of a troublemaker and wannabe celebrity than a primary star on turf.
As he tends to spend ample time acting on reality TV, becoming Hollywood’s hilarious celeb bust, he’s a bust on the field as well, a worthless tragicomedy that no team wants to take a risk on signing even a multi-year deal. There were times, of course, when he was an unattractive problem child with a disturbing mood that gradually dragged down morale and divided a cohesive locker room.
Knowingly, he always thought every team he played with disowned or picked on him. Turns out he wasn’t the victim, guilty of staining a spirited franchise and elicited diversity, with all his infantile cries and presumptions that all his former teams pointed the finger at him when the team faltered and faded out of contention.
Owens had a perspective that he was never the chemistry saboteur, but the innocent receiver who convincingly tried to help his team win. He had a viewpoint that he was never the agitator, but the impeccable paragon all of us admired.
The most explosive part of an overexposed story is that he’s a risky addition and older, having the audacity to tell the nation that he’s a misunderstood athlete and despised because of his physical capabilities and talent.
In the aftermath of all his fallouts with former franchises, at least for now, all teams are leery and unsure of his morals and actions. In other words, any team is handling his availability with precautionary measures, not in a hurry to sign a cancerous star.
For raising mischief, his disruptive stance allows general mangers and owners to overlook abilities on what he can deliver as a prolific wideout. But the truth is Owens, once widely regarded as the most talented receiver at his position with incredible size and athleticism, is a renegade because of his personal feuds with teammates and coaching staff, the one rebellious buffoon no one prefers taking a gamble on.
According to several executives, he’s abandoned and ignored for poisoning a dysfunctional unit by selfishly yelling during sideline altercations. Will he ever sign, eventually? Given his history in the past, he is a cancer within any organization, but surely someone is courageous enough to take possession of a player with baggage.
For now, he doesn’t even exist in the league whatsoever, patiently waiting for a phone call from team executives. Until then, he’s foolishly adored to some degree for exposing himself as a publicity clown on television in the new season of his VH1 reality show, a full-blown spectacle that started earlier this week.
Maybe he meant to get the popcorn ready for his reality stunt. It’s appealing, in a way, that he’s suffering bad karma with all the executives rebuffing interest and carefully considering before offering a contract. This isn’t so surprising, especially when Owens has a slew of enemies and lost all trustworthiness for harassing former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb with unbearable feuds on the sidelines.
This isn’t so stunning, as usual, when he indiscreetly prompted troubles as a member of the San Francisco 49ers and called then-quarterback Jeff Garcia gay. This isn’t so overwhelming or jolting as the troubled receiver is jobless until a team is desperately depleted in the receiving corps and badly in need of an explosive wideout to solidify an impoverished department.
He certainly isn’t avoided for competence or toughness, but rejected by the league for insecurities and jealousy in many ways, including outbursts on the sidelines that he generates any time he’s not getting enough touches.
While he’s waiting for his phone to ring, at every level of every organization, each is reflecting and weighing options on whether to engage in negotiations and offer a fittingly short-term contract to a destructive, megalomaniacal jackass.
Throughout his merciless career, he has played with four teams without winning a championship but came very close to fulfilling triumph. In those days, he served as a member of the Eagles and rehabbed religiously to heal quickly from a damaging ankle injury and played in Super Bowl XXXIX for Philadelphia, a team he verbally had callous feuds with and fell short of winning a championship with.
If he vows to ripen as a matured teammate and secure the role of a veteran leader, he could be a potential suitor for the New England Patriots. Very fittingly, the Patriots can groom and influence a rebellious Owens after grabbing obliterating receivers.
It’s still easy to envision T.O. drama harming a revamping franchise and quickly irritating teammates with crybaby antics and outrageous stunts as Owens becomes discontent with not getting enough touches. That is exactly how he reacted in a powerful Dallas offense when Tony Romo failed to toss passes in his direction and instead connected with tight end Jason Witten.
That is exactly how he reacted in Philly when McNabb refused to design routes. That is exactly how he responded in San Francisco when Jeff Garcia discovered other routes and threw it in the favor of Owens’ teammates.
He somewhat learned a valuable lesson, I assume, when he signed a one-year deal with the Buffalo Bills before last season. Pressured by the nonstop shouts and temper flares of Owens, Trent Edwards, a young and unproven quarterback, fortunately wasn’t harassed or verbally insulted.
Everywhere he has been affiliated with, Owens has dragged down unity with a disruptive and destructive psyche, one no team could stomach obviously as he sits and waits. He’s currently playing the sit-and-wait game, a hapless game as no one has interest in the one receiver who sabotages chemistry and divides a dispirited locker room on the possible verge of new heights.
So with Terrible Owens jobless, maybe he has learned an important message. Be careful what you wish for, refrain from the toughest ass attitude, and have gratitude for peers and ownership. Hopefully, Owens understand, he has no I in Terrell Owens and must share the wealth unselfishly.
Portrayed as a pompous demon or, even worse, an invincible ghost, he’s not jobless because of his declining talent, but because of his foolish and unnecessary troubles. He’s a quality player for someone, but it’s his acts that matter. He told the Associated Press that he’s a changed man and he’s not a bad guy, blaming ESPN for labeling him as a demon.
Sorry Owens, but you are a bad guy.
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