A Plan Destined to Fail

So after sitting quietly and alone on the sidelines for I'm sure many more months than he and his brilliant agent expected, and after recently surviving rumors that he would be forced to join the NFL's worst team in the St. Louis Rams, beleaguered wide receiver Terrell Owens announced this week that he will be playing for the Cincinnati Bengals. The announcement has come among much fanfare and speculation, with fellow Bengals wideout Chad Ochocinco commenting that he gladly "hands over the reins as the team's #1 receiver" to TO, and also questioning how any defense in the NFL is going to even approach trying to cover the Bengals with their new-found passing offense.

To which I answer with one word: Easily.

Let me begin my pointing out, both to Ochocinco and to anyone else who might be experiencing temporal confusion: this is not 2003-2005. Back in those years, a young, brash wide receiver in Cincy averaged over 90 receptions, over 1300 yards and nearly 10 touchdowns a season over that three-year span. During those same three years, a young and equally brash wide receiver in San Francisco and Philadelphia named TO averaged, on a 16-game equivalent, over 90 catches, nearly 1200 yards and 12 touchdowns in his own right. At times over the past decade or so of NFL play, each of Johnson and TO has looked downright unstoppable, and either one of them could have laid as good a claim as anybody in the league to the title of the NFL's best wide receiver.

But that was a long, long time ago now. After being run out of San Francisco, run out of Philadelphia and then eventually run out of Dallas, TO spent 2009 playing all 16 games for the Buffalo Bills, posting just 55 catches for 825 yards and 5 touchdowns. Each of these key production figures for a wideout rated as TO's lowest in his previous ten years of full-season play. To say that TO dropped off a bit in Buffalo last year would be a tremendous understatement, especially given that he failed to catch more than four balls in all but three of the team's games last season, including ending his streak of consecutive games with at least one reception after TO busted out with a big bagel in a 20-point drubbing at home by the eventual Superbowl champion Saints in Week 3 of 2009.

Meanwhile, Ochocinco, who is working on just his tenth year in the NFL as opposed to TO's 14 years of service, has also seen his numbers drop off dramatically over the past couple of seasons. The past two years have basically seen career lows for Ochocinco in both receptions (53 and 72 in the past two seasons) and yards (540 and 1047). All of this is to say, make absolutely no mistake about this whatsoever, but these two guys are both on the downsides of their careers, probably well on the downsides given the trend in each's numbers.

And this is where my feeling comes from that this supposed "match made in heaven" is going to quickly look more like one made in hell than one made up high in the sky. I mean, starting with TO, as I mentioned above and as is common knowledge among any NFL fans out there, TO has ended up feuding and eventually splitting with every single quarterback he has ever played professional bar for. Every single one, period. That's just what he does. And does anyone out there think Carson Palmer is suddenly a guy with sufficient intestinal fortitude to stand up to the onslaught from TO? Did Donovan McNabb, a guy with far more NFL success than Carson Palmer? Did Tony Romo? Didn't think so. And neither is Carson Palmer, of that you can be assured.

Moreover, TO has never in his career played on a team with another big-name, big-talking wideout since back in the days with Jerry Rice in San Fran. And how did one work out? TO spent his last few years as a 49er complaining that Jerry Rice was overhyped, that Rice got too many balls thrown his way (mostly at TO's expense), and that Rice wasn't nearly as adept at the position overall at that point in their respective careers than was TO. So that one didn't work out. In Philly, TO was the only answer in the passing offense, and we all saw how that one ended up with TO doing push-ups in the driveway of his New Jersey home on Sundays instead of playing for the Eagles. In Dallas there also was no other big-name wideout, but TO couldn't even live with the specter of tight end Jason Witten, and again ended up causing a rift with the quarterback that led him out of Dallas and eventually to the frozen tundra of Buffalo, New York last year. So now I'm supposed to believe that TO is going to find a way to peacefully coexist with Chad Ochocinco, who himself has never been good at dealing with another big receiver on the team such as was the case back in 2008 when TJ Houshmahblahblah came out of the woodwork and essentially took the #1 receiver mantle away from Ochocino in that year? Come on. This whole move, especially on this scandal-ridden team, is custom made to be a disaster.

The other thing about the TO signing that gives me more than a little bit of concern is his contract, which has widely been reported at a $2 million base salary, with six different incentive payments each worth an additional third of a million dollars if TO attains them. Rather than focus on team wins and losses to trigger the incentive payments, or on the offense as a whole or even just on the passing offense of the whole team, the incentive payments in TO's contract will pay him 333k if he reaches 60 receptions in 2010, and another 333k for 100 catches. He will receive 333k if he scores 9 touchdowns on the season, and another 333k for 13 tds. TO will get 333k if he catches balls for 1000 yards on the year, and another 333k for 1300 yards receiving. All of these individual statistics, while in a vacuum all generally good indicators of a wideout having a solid season, are going to I predict cause problems and direct conflicts of interest with a guy who has time and time again proven himself to be self-focused and self-centered to an unbelievable degree.

I mean, can't you just see it now? TO is sitting at 50 catches in Week 12, he's got four games left in the regular season, and then Carson Palmer has a bad game and TO gets just one catch on the day. Suddenly he is still 9 receptions away from his 333 thou with three games to go. What do you think TO is gonna be doing all through that next week? When he's not yelling to the media about how he is under-utilized by his team, he's going to be right up there in Carson Palmer's ear, complaining about not getting the ball thrown his way enough and actively lobbying for more attention. When a guy has proven himself to be as selfish as TO has over his career, giving a guy like that an incentive-laden contract is just begging for him to return to his former self-aggrandizing ways.

Just don't let the Bengals come running to me to complain about how "there's no I in team" when TO starts squawking about not getting the ball thrown his way enough in 2010. By signing TO to join wideout Chad Ochocinco in Cincinnati, the Bengals are making their bed with two of the most flammable, outspoken and trouble-makey figures in all of their sport. Now the Bengals will have to lie in it.

Winners and Losers

The NFL packed another powerful punch in Week 2, with several big winners and several big losers emerging from what we saw all Sunday long across the world's best professional sports league bar none.

The Big Winners:

Rex Ryan. The automated phone call to 55,000 Jets season ticket holders during the week, encouraging them to come out and support the team as hard as they can and hinting at expected victory for the first time against the Cheatriots in New York since 2000. Keeping his rookie quarterback totally in the game and not requiring him to do too much. Holding the Cheats to just 9 points in his first time coaching against Bill Belichik. In fact, giving up just 9 and 7 points in his first two games as head coach. Watch out for the Jets in the biggest sports media market in the world.

Jay Cutler. Cutler didn't exactly play great against the Steelers' vaunted defense, but he sure saved himself a whole world of heartache by throwing the fourth-quarter td pass to Johnny Knox to secure a win this week and stop himself from starting off 0-2 in Chicago. Although Cutler only threw for 236 yards on the day, it was enough to win against a very stingy defense, and more importantly, his line included two tds and no picks, a huge improvement from the 77 interceptions he threw against the Packers at Lambeau last week. Cutler has been redeemed for now, and his Bears are right back in the hunt for the hotly-contested NFC North.

Eli Manning. Say what you want about the guy, but Eli is getting better every single week, and he is downright proficient at leading a 4th-quarter offense. And how 'bout that 360-turnaround play and then accurate throw in the fourth quarter of Sunday night's game against the Cowboys? That was Favre-esque, and by that I mean the athletic, youthful version of Favre we used to see with the Packers several decades ago. Eli's Giants are off to a 2-0 start in the NFC East, and put a serious damper on the opening of the Cowboys' opulent new stadium in Dallas. And special kudos also go out to new Giants starting wideout Mario Manningham, who now has 13 receptions for 208 yards and two touchdowns through his first two games as a starter in New York, helping to fill the void left by the self-shooting Plaxico Burress.

Drew Brees. Wow. Nine touchdowns in two games this year, after easily outperforming all other NFL quarterbacks in 2008 as well in completing 65% of his passes for 34 touchdowns and 5069 yards last season. The Saints are averaging 46.5 points per game to start the season, and with the Panthers playing like dog poop, it looks like the Saints will be talking playoffs (cue the Jim Mora "Playoffs?!" soundbite here) soon enough coming out of the NFC South.

The Losers:

TO. Even with the Bills winning their game this weekend to move to 1-1, TO is quickly picking up right where he left off last year as far as his season being defined more by two blatant drops so far in his first two games than by any actual highlights he's been coming up with. Yeah he scored his first touchdown this weekend, but have you seen his stats so far on the season? We're 1/8 of the way through NFL 2009 already, and TO is at 5 catches for 98 yards and 1 score. Not good. Nor is it good that TO was seen angrily yelling at the fans on the sidelines after his touchdown this weekend, nor suggesting after last week's loss that his quarterback "needs to throw the ball downfield" more. Uh huh, Terrell. Just catch the damn ball.

Tony Romo. 13 of 29 for 127 yards on national tv on Sunday night to open the Cowboys' new gem of a stadium? One touchdown but three picks, all of which led to touchdowns for the Giants on the night? Granted one of the interceptions was a flukey off-the-shoe tip catch by Giants rookie Bruce Johnson, but still, Romo looked like crap on Sunday night, there's just no other way to say it. And how tired are we all getting of having to look at Wade Phillips' obviously confused, beaten-down mug on the sidelines 85 times a game for the Cowboys? Thank god that guy'll be long gone a year from now. Hope everyone likes the idea of Mike Shanahan or Bill Cowher's scowl on those sidelines, because that's what we other NFC East fans will be seeing a lot of starting in 2010.

The Tennessee Titans. The last team to lose a game in 2008 has now started off 2009 at 0-2, thanks to not enough offense and a very poor defensive showing giving up 420 yards against the Houston Texans this weekend. This week's beneficiary was Texans quarterback Matt Schaub, who followed up his awful performance against the Jets in week 1 with a 359-yard, four-touchdown outburst against the defending AFC South champions this Sunday. Also spoiled in the loss was the Titan's Chris Johnson's sick-ass effort, scoring on touchdown runs of 91 and 57 yards on the day in addition to catching a td pass of 69 yards. Now that right there is a fantasy football players' dream, especially the super dumb leagues that award extra points for touchdowns of more than 50 yards.

Special Category: The Loser Winners:

The Washington Redskins. A 9-7 "win", if you can even call it that, over the hapless St. Louis Rams this weekend doesn't even begin to describe the ineptitude shown by both teams at Fedex Field on Sunday afternoon. Skins qb Jason Campbell did throw for 245 yards in the win, but obviously no td passes as four 60-yard drives for the Skins stalled out at or before the red zone without the team notching a single touchdown against a Rams squad who has won only twice in their last 18 games. Daniel Snyder continues his reign of terror in Washington, DC, bringing in an endless parade of overpriced superstars and ineffective coaches to the nation's capital and absolutely wasting his time yet again this year in the NFC East.

And then there are the Raiders, and more specifically, quarterback Jamarcus Russel against the Chiefs in Kansas City. Russell went 7 for 24 for 109 yards on a thoroughly miserable day in the pocket, and yet somehow that was enough to win the game! In fact, this entire game was a total and utter mismatch, with the Chiefs amassing 409 total yards to the Raiders' paltry 166, earning 25 first downs to the Raiders' 11, and holding the ball for nearly 39 minutes to the Raiders' 21, but yet none of this could stop Jamarcus Russel from becoming the second quarterback in more than twelve years to complete less than 30 percent of his passes with a minimum of 20 attempts but still win an NFL game. It's hard to imagine an uglier win than this one, or an uglier franchise than the Oakland Raiders.

And the Biggest Loser of All award goes to:

NBC. What on earth are these guys doing with their Sunday Night Football coverage? This is Dick Ebersol's big plan to keep NBC relevant to the football scene in the U.S.? Faith Hill copying Hank Williams with a ghey pre-recorded song just prior to the coverage of the kickoff? Repeatedly showing the letters "SNF" to promote their own Sunday Night Football brand, also clearly copied directly from the long-standing MNF Monday Night Football moniker? And then, somehow, forbidding the studio commentators from referring to "NBC" at all during the opening segment and at halftime, instead insisting on repeated references to "Football Night in America". Football Night in America? On a day that is chock full from dawn to dusk with NFL football games, Sunday night is now going to be known across the nation and the globe as "Football Night in America"? Keep dreaming, NBC. And keep dreaming that your tagline "I've been waiting all day for Sunday night" will speak to a single viewer of your games, who once again have just spent an entire fucking day watching nothing but NFL football games! Why on earth would any of us be waiting all day for Sunday night? It's one thing to just blindly copy Monday Night Football like a bunch of plagiaristic lemmings, but for crying out loud, use your brains at least a teensy little bit and change the things that don't make any sense whatsoever when applied to Sunday Night Football instead of Monday night. On Mondays, depending on the matchup, I and I'm sure many of you out there do in fact look forward all day to the Monday night game. But on Sunday? I'm surprised they didn't just call their Sunday night broadcast "Monday Night Football" and not change that either when they stole it from ABC. What an absolute joke, top to bottom on NBC's coverage of the Sunday night games.

And NBC, I have a newsflash for you: Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick were really, really cool co-anchors on SportsCenter back in the day. But that was literally 18 years ago now. Today, Keith Olberman is widely regarded as one of the biggest assholes on network tv, so partisan and biased in his unprofessional "reporting" that he had to be kicked off of covering all political events on MSNBC, and NBC viewers don't want to see him anywhere on the network, including on Sunday night football games instead of the refuse pile where his stale ass belongs. And Dan Patrick is, well, old. In 1992 when Patrick used to bust out with "the Whiff" on a strikeout in baseball and "en fuego" to describe Michael Jordan's latest run, it was really new, cool and refreshing. Now Patrick's shtick is just old, and boring. Seriously -- really, really boring. And then to go along with the tired Keith Olberman and Dan Patrick routine, you bring in Tony Dungy and some other guy I've never heard of or seen before to liven things up? I've got some more news for you, NBC. Tony Dungy may be a very nice man, he may have endured a very sad situation with his son. He may have somehow underperformed and got overrated for that underperformance for years as a coach in Tampa Bay and then in Indianapolis. And, he may even have somehow hitched his wagon to Mike Vick this year and yet still, somehow, come away from it all squeaky-clean as ever. And of course Dungy may be a deeply religious man. But, unfortunately for NBC, none of this does anything to make Dungy even remotely interesting as a football commentator. He is just terrible, and the team put together by NBC for the Sunday night coverage is without a doubt the worst of any network, any game, covering football games on television in my entire lifetime. There, I said it.

Your World Champion Philadelphia Phillies' magic number is 6 baybeeee. Bring it on.

TO the Joke

So after last Thursday's semi-surprise announcement that troubled yet talented wide receiver Terrell Owens had been summarily cut from the Dallas Cowboys, word filtered out late on Saturday that TO had signed a one-year, $6.5 million deal with the Buffalo Bills. I spent the better part of the weekend mulling this deal over, and the best word I have heard that I think describes the situation to a tee is weird. This is a downright weird signing to be taking place given the nature of the deal, the parties involved and especially the timing of the entire situation.

Explaining why such a high-profile all-pro athlete like TO would accept a one-year contract, worth only about $4 million guaranteed money, in a city like Buffalo, with a team like the current Bills' makeup, TO explained it like this: "I looked at the defensive side of ball and offensive side of the ball, and these guys have all the pieces."

Mmmmmm hmmmmm. So let's see. On the defensive side of the ball, cited first by TO among his reasons for moving to play with the Bills, Buffalo ended 2008 in 14th place out of 32 teams overall in yards allowed per game. 14th of 32? That's the definition of average right there. The Bills were 22nd in the league against the rush, and 13th against the pass. Average, at best. In total points allowed, 14th of 32 teams. So to suggest that the Buffalo defense has "all the pieces" as TO has stated, is sheer silliness to say the least.

Now let's turn to the offensive side of the ball. The Bills' total offense ranking in 2008 was an uninspiring 25th out of 32 teams. This breaks down to 14th of 32 teams in rushing yards, and an even more depressing 22nd in the league in throwing the ball, for a total of 23rd place in aggregate points scored during the 2008 campaign. What's more, Buffalo's leading rusher, Marshawn Lynch, is likely to miss at least the first four games of the 2009 season due to suspension relating to gun charges levied against him earlier this year. And, to be quite frank, the Bills do not have much at quarterback, the position where TO has directed most of his hate and unacceptable theatrics towards over the past several seasons in the NFL. In 2008, Buffalo QB Trent Edwards recorded 2699 yards and 11 touchdowns through the air in 14 games played. That's what TO is looking forward to playing with in Buffalo? That's who TO wants throwing him the dam ball for the next year of his life? This is the team that "had all the pieces" on offense to make TO want to play there right away, even under a bad contract and with a bad team on both sides of the ball?

The fonkeys on ESPN can write all the want about what a great fit TO is for the Buffalo Bills. The truth, however, is that this deal is a flaming disaster with almost zero chance of anything positive to come of it. How many games into the 2009 season will it be before TO starts bitching about not getting enough balls thrown his way? How long before TO blows up at Bills offensive coordinator Turk Schonert in a public way on the sidelines, because he didn't get passed to one time when he claims he was open, or because teammate Lee Evans got targeted on a given play instead of him? This team was 7--9 last year, but that doesn't even bring to light how bad the team was, starting off 5-1 only to end the season 2-8 in their final ten games to finish in dead last in the AFC East,a full two games out of even 3rd place.

This team stinks out loud, especially on offense, and double-especially in the passing game. Sure TO should help those offensive team stats to some degree, but to suggest that this is anything but an absolute desperation attempt by TO to take what was likely the only contract really offered to him from any NFL team is utterly ludicrous. To think that TO has fallen so far, so fast, that he has to go to one of the "NFL exile" cities to play for a crappy team in a one-year deal worth only $4 million guaranteed is almost all the payback I could ever hope for as an Eagles fan who still can't wait to see TO lying motionless on the turf at the Linc in Philadelphia with the fans cheering all the way.

Exuent, T.O.

So Terrell Owens is gone from Dallas, after three tumultuous seasons that -- again -- started off with TO saying all the right things, but slowly morphed into significant strain between the wideout and his quarterback. Eventually, the TO saga ended in Dallas with a split among some of the players, public spats among teammates and a resulting rift right down the middle of the locker room that left the Cowboys as a team simply unable to focus on what the needed to focus on, on winning the games at hand. Make no mistake -- it is no coincidence that the 44-8 drubbing at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles on the last game of the 2008 season in a win-or-go-home game for both teams happens to be TO's last game with the team. Just as was the case in San Francisco and in Philadelphia before this, TO just gets into the bloodstream of whatever team he is playing on, and ruins them from the inside unless and until he is simply sent home.

Interesting, Mike Greenberg said on ESPN Radio this morning that at one point on Thursday, all but three teams had publicly expressed their lack of interest in bringing TO, and all the baggage that comes along with him, to their teams. The three stragglers included New Orleans, where coach Sean Payton came on to ESPN late on Thursday to publicly state that the Saints will not entertain bringing the man in to camp, as well as Tennessee, whose GM also came on the air this morning to declare his own lack of interest. I had originally thought of maybe Minnesota, who is desperately in search of a passing game, but their head coach Brad Childress was square in the middle of the TO situation in Philly a few years ago as the offensive coordinator, and would not be willing to get involved with that whole mess again. I also considered Baltimore, who thought they had signed TO already before he ended up in Philly several years ago, but their head coach was also in Philadelphia during the TO debacle. And since the guy burns every single bridge he's ever played at, at this point this leaves TO with just one team who allegedly is not dead-set against bringing his whole act into town.

The Oakland Raiders.

Is it me, or is Al Davis looking and acting crazier than ever? Would he actually consider bringing the biggest anus in the NFL into Oakland to make a run at establishing some kind of a passing game at one of the clearly worst teams in the entire league? Would TO end his career by running routes and catching passes thrown by JaMarcus Russell, as the kid learns the ropes of playing quarterback in the NFL? Between all the dropped passes of the past couple of years, and all the drama that is TO, would the Raiders even be any good with TO in the works?

Wouldn't it be awesome if just nobody would hire TO, at any price? Is that even possible to happen?