Why can't Terrell Owens get a job?
Terrell Owens’s inability to find a spot on a National Football League roster has become absurd. Sure, snubbing the once revered receiver may have made sense earlier in the offseason, when he was demanding $5 million for the season, a fee that is simply too high for the 36-year-old constantly accompanied by personal baggage at all times. Now Owens is being much more reasonable and is simply looking for a job for the 2010 season.
The fact that even though once he lowered his demands, Owens still remained unemployed is perplexing. Numerous teams around the League could not just use, but actually need his services rather badly. Yet, the NFL-wide blackballing of Owens has continued.
For instance, when asked about signing Owens, San Diego Chargers general manager A.J. Smith said: "We're all set right now with our receivers." Realistically, the Chargers are anything but all set with receivers at the time being. They are a pass-first offence with a rookie running back most likely starting, yet they are possibly without their star receiver Vincent Jackson, who has been embroiled in a contract dispute and is set to miss the beginning of the season to suspension.
This leaves the Chargers with Malcom Floyd and Legedu Naanee to start the season, a duo that has barely over 1000 career receiving yards combined. How would Owens, a man with nearly 15,000 receiving yards through his career, not be a welcome addition? At worst he would help motivate Jackson by competing for his top-slot. At best, he would help the Chargers remain contenders.
The Seattle Seahawks have also bafflingly said they have no interest in Owens. The Seahawks are due to have Deon Butler and T.J. Houshmandzadeh as their starting wideouts, with Deion Branch and rookie Golden Tate working into the positions occasionally. Owens could easily crack this starting line up, yet the Seahawks’ new head coach Pete Carroll has said he would rather work on developing young players. In a league where Super Bowl contenders emerge out of nowhere, is Carroll so sure Seattle is out of the mix that he doesn’t want a man with over 1000 receptions on the field?
To be fair, Owens has shown himself to be selfish and pretty capable of disruptive behaviour. However, in the NFL that does not particularly single him out as a rarity. At least Owens has been able to maintain off-field esteem and his disruptive behaviour is generally mild and obnoxious rather than malicious.
He may be old for a NFL receiver, but Owens’s conditioning is one of the most renowned in the entire league. He showed no signs of physical struggles last season while playing for the Buffalo Bills.
If given a good quarterback, Owens can still run the field with the best of them. Last season he was part of a stagnant Buffalo Bills offence and performed poorly due to the Bills’ lack of quarterback ability.
There Owens had 55 catches for 829 yards, but showed that he would have been capable of so much more if given proper passing. After all, a receiver can’t make the play entirely. If anything, his time with the Bills showed that Owens has matured and can play without being a distraction. He never did anything improper and was even fine with Lee Evans being in the No. 1 position for the Bills.
Owens is not a perfect receiver, but there are far too many teams in the NFL with glaring holes in their receiver corps for him to remain unsigned. He would be a welcome addition to teams like the Chargers, Seahawks, the Tennessee Titans, the Oakland Raiders, or even the Washington Redskins. Whichever team does sign him should be happy, Owens has a chip on his shoulder now and that can only ignite his competitiveness further.
Tags: