Philadelphia Eagles: Between a Rock and a Hardhead
I’ve got to weigh in for another moment on this thing with Terrell Owens. I’ve already established the fact that owner Jeff Lurie is taking the right stance in refusing to give in to this clown in his demands for a new contract, particularly after he has badmouthed his team and his quarterback, Donovan McNabb. McNabb is a class act, a true gentleman, something with which T.O. will possibly never be acquainted.
That said, the word out of Philly, from McNabb and others, is that “we can win without T.O.” I’ve read sportswriters make the same point. And I want to ask, “exactly where have they been over the course of the last several years?”
As much as Terrell Owens is a jerk who ought not be mollycoddled, the fact remains that the Eagles cannot win the Super Bowl without Terrell Owens. They couldn’t win it with him this past season, and if there was one obvious thing about this past NFL season, it is that T.O. is one of a handful of players that truly is a difference-maker. Without T.O., Donovan 
McNabb was a slightly-better-than-average QB; without T.O., the Eagles’ receivers were possibly the worst in the league. T.O. either elevated McNabb’s game greatly, or proved what a great QB he has always been, only lacking adequate WR’s (and I’ll have to confess that that is a possibility; I agreed with Rush when he said that McNabb was highly overrated, but at the same time, it’s possible that Joe Montana would have been closer to Joe Pisarcik had he had Todd Pinkston to throw to instead of Jerry Rice…). That the Eagles were a significantly-better team with T.O. on the field seemed to me to be one of the most patently obvious truths of the 2004 season; had Peyton Manning not been All-Universe, T.O. would have been, in my book, a shoo-in for MVP.
So what’s this nonsense about the Eagles being able to win (well, I mean more than win the sorry NFC East) without T.O.? It’s garbage, pure and simple. Todd Pinkston isn’t even a good #2 receiver, and the thought of going into 2005 with him as the #1 option should scare any Eagles’ fan with a pulse. I don’t know what that’ll mean vis a vis their dealings with Owens; he’s possibly already burned the bridge he’d need to cross. But regardless of the outcome with him, if the Eagles think they’ve got enough to win with Pinkston and Greg Lewis manning the WR slots (oh, they did draft a rookie, right? If T.O. doesn’t come back, that rookie better be named Marvin Harrison.), they’re sorely mistaken.
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
