Why Terrell Owens may have been the most overrated player in Eagles history.

Ah, Terrell Eldorado Owens. The great hope of the longsuffering Eagles fans who arrived by trade in time for the 2004 season. He was finally going to solve years of mediocre to terrible WR play (seriously, check out this list of stiffs that Birds fans endured in the early years of the Andy Reid era). Owens had proven himself to be a premier playmaker in San Francisco and after increasing dissatisfaction there, forced his way to Philadelphia to team with Donovan McNabb. Fireworks were expected, and were delivered. The Eagles rolled to a 13-1 start to the season, due in no small part to a suddenly explosive offense, and endured an injury to Owens that had him sit until the Super Bowl. Despite his efforts in that game, the Birds came up short to an all-time Patriots team and wouldn't return to the big game till Saint Nick led them back in 2017.

The following offseason was when things started to turn sour. Owens wanted a raise which the Eagles (having handed out a generous extension less than a year before) were uninterested in granting. His frustration with that, as well as the downturn in his relationship with McNabb (partially due to McNabb's supposed conditioning issues during the Super Bowl) led to a hold out and some bizarre media antics. By the middle of the season, the Birds had had enough; they suspended and subsequently released Owens, a move that (alongside a seemingly bottomless list of injuries) sent the Birds to their first losing season in six years, and their only one of that decade. TO eventually ended up with the hated Cowboys, setting up one of my favorite moments as an Eagles fan.

All told, as an Eagle Owens produced 22 games, 133 catches, 2,085 yards and 20 touchdowns. The Eagles were 18-4 in those 22 games. Sounds like (despite how it ended) the Owens experiment was an unqualified success, right? Not so fast. Let's talk about (and debunk) some of the narratives surrounding the weird and wild 20 months that TO was an Eagle:

Owens was underpaid by the Eagles, so his antics were justified! Owens defenders have long pushed the narrative that the initial extension the Eagles signed him to represented an underpay, partly because it was backloaded (a more common practice back then). Owens ranked 5th among WRs in total cash received over those two seasons, despite being suspended for half of the 2005 campaign. His contract called for him to make $13.5 million during his two year stay in Philly, or approximately 8.1% of the available cap at the time. In 2026 terms, this would be an AAV of about $24.5 million. Considering Owens was nearly 31 at the time this deal was signed and had already precipitated locker room issues in SF (we'll talk about that before we're done), is that really such a grotesque underpay? I say no. True enough, that $24.5 million figure would only rank 19th among current NFL WR contracts, but would be tops among those who had already turned 30. No meaningful underpay here.

Owens made the Eagles offense elite! Pyrotechnics aside, this narrative doesn't hold up under the scrutiny of statistical analysis. Below is a breakdown of six different statistical measures and where the Eagles ranked in them leaguewide over the first five years of the McNabb Era:

Season	Yards	Yards/play	Points	Turnovers	EPA	OSRS	AVG
2000	17	16	12	16	13	12	14.3
2001	17	16	9	7	19	9	12.8
2002	10	16	4	9	11	4	9.0
2003	18	12	11	6	9	10	11.0
2004	9	6	8	8	8	10	8.2

You'll note that, while the counting stats all improved in 2004 over the averages from the other years, the one stat that did not (Offensive SRS) is the one stat that takes strength of schedule into account. The 2004 Eagles were blessed to face a remarkably weak collection of defenses; they played just four games against who ranked in the top ten in OSRS while nine against teams in ranked 20th or lower. In those four games (Steelers, Ravens, Redskins 2x), the Eagles score just 15.75 PPG, which was somehow even lower than the 16.39 PPG these teams allowed on the season overall. The ultimate point of all of this is, did the '04 Birds really improve that dramatically on offense? Or was it more the product of an accommodating set of opposing defenses than anything else?

Two caveats that deserve mention here. First, the Birds did improve notably in offensive DVOA in 2004, from an average of about 12th over the previous three seasons to 5th. On the other side, one has to wonder how much of this improvement (however you might choose to measure it) was due to the emergence of Brian Westbrook as a serious offensive weapon? Westbrook had, by the end of that season, turned into one of the premier all purpose backs in the NFL (he was one of just six RBs that decade to play at least 100 games and average at least 100 AP yards/game).

In summary, I'm not sure how to balance all of this data out exactly. Personally I think the upward trends observed in 2004 were more due to strength of schedule than anything else, with the more advanced data being inconclusive. What I can say is that there is no conclusive proof that the Eagles improved considerably as an offense purely because of the presence of Owens. This is not the same thing as saying that Owens didn't help the offense, just that there isn't proof that Owens alone elevated the offense to some new stratosphere.

Owens made the Eagles a Super Bowl contender! Eagles fans from that era know this to be false. The Birds had been among the most successful teams in the NFL from 2000-2003, with their 51 total wins easily leading the league (no one else, even the Patriots, had more than 45). They were also the only team to make the playoffs in all four years. The advanced stats tell a similar if more nuanced story, with the Eagles averaging a leaguewide rank of 10th in DVOA over that time, and 7th in SRS.

What impact did Owens have? The Eagles improved their win total from the aforementioned average of 12.75/year to 15 and their team DVOA score from 10th to 5th, but their SRS score fell from 7th to 9th. Across the board, you could say there was progress but not radical improvement. As mentioned earlier, the wins total almost certainly increased due to a weaker schedule as much as anything else (the entire NFC only had two teams with above average SRS scores in 2004, one being the Eagles). It's certainly fair to say the Eagles hit their five year peak in '04, but how much of that was Owens' presence or the emergence of Brian Westbrook or the signing of Javon Kearse or the returns of Hugh Douglas and Jeremiah Trotter or...?

One last thought here; in Bill Barnwell's excellent ranking of the top 25 teams of the first 25 years of the 21st century, three Eagles teams made the cut, but none of them were the 2004 squad.

Owens got the Eagles over the NFC Championship Game hump! From the standpoint of emotional impact, this point probably looms the largest in Eagles fans' minds, and with good reason: those of us who watched those teams remember all too well the three consecutive NFCCG losses we endured before breaking through against Atlanta. Does Owens deserve any credit for that breakthrough? In a word, no. The Eagles did not need Terrell Owens to get to that round (again, having done so three times previously), nor did they need him to earn home field advantage (they had it the previous two years as well). Nor did they even need Owens to beat the Falcons; he had sat out the playoffs to that point nursing his leg injury. To his credit, he returned for the Super Bowl and played a good game, but the Birds did not end up needing him to get there.

You sort of have to put up with personalities like T.O; all the great WRs were temperamental! First off, that second part isn't even true. The undisputed GOAT of NFL WRs was Jerry Rice, who probably was the polar opposite of his onetime teammate in terms of personality. Others like Isaac Bruce, Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson and so on tend to prove that greatness doesn't need to be accompanied by a caustic personality.

Let's deal with the first part of that statement in the form of a question: do you actually need the big talent, big personality WR to win championships? Here's a list of recent the guys that fit that bill and their team's postseason success:

PLAYER	SEASONS	SUPER BOWL APPEARANCES	SUPER BOWL WINS
Terrell Owens	15	1	0
Randy Moss	15	2	0
Antonio Brown	13	1	0
Tyreek Hill	10	1	1
Chad Johnson	11	1	0
Plaxico Burress	11	1	1
Odell Beckham	11	1	1
TOTALS	86	8	3

86 seasons to win three Super Bowls? That's almost exactly law of averages stuff (in other words, a random player on a random team would produce a similar result). By the way, I focused on guys were were/are known headaches off the field in one way or another but this phenomena isn't limited to "problem" WRs. The top nine WRs by receiving yards this century are not on the above list, but have combined for nine SB appearances and just three victories in 125 combined seasons of service. Remember this the next time you hear a narrative that implies that a team MUST have an elite WR to be a serious contender.

Note on the above for the stats crowd: it is a mistake to assume that the above proves that WRs don't contribute to their team's playoff success. That said, the combined sample size is large enough (211 total seasons) to at least strongly suggest that the connection between "big name WR on roster" and "serious Super Bowl contender" is much weaker than we're lead to believe.

I can't resist making a few comments here about how difficult of a teammate Owens generally was. This was a player who benefitted more than most WRs from elite QB play during his entire career. The primary quarterbacks who started for his teams were Steve Young (45 regular season starts), Jeff Garcia (71), Donovan McNabb (21) and Tony Romo (39). In those years, those QBs combined for nine Pro Bowl berths and those teams were in the playoffs nine times. How Owens stumbled into playing for four different Pro Bowl caliber players at the QB spot is beyond me, but he managed to sour on and publicly feud with three of them. Does anyone wonder why five different franchises (49ers, Eagles, Cowboys, Bills, Bengals) gave up on Owens for non-performance related reasons? How much of an off-field negative must a player have to be for that many teams to say "Yeah, he's good when he plays, but we don't want him any more."?

Terrell Owens made Donovan McNabb a better QB. Here's where you find some merit to the pro-Owens case. McNabb was similar to Jalen Hurts in that he was unlikely to be an extremely high volume passer, but as we have discussed before, QB success is far better measured in efficiency, not volume. In terms of passer rating, McNabb ranked 18th, 7th, 8th and 16th from 2000-03 (four year average: 12th). In terms of ANY/A, McNabb's four year average was 17th. In 2004, those ranks improved to 4th and 3rd.

The counterpoint is fairly simple. First, as we said before, the slate of opposing defenses that the Eagles played was remarkably soft and likely accounted for at least some of this improvement. Second, while these critical measures did improve for Donovan in his one full season with Owens, why didn't that translate to the games that mattered most? In the two playoff wins without Owens, McNabb was ultra efficient (111.3 passer rating). Those two games represent the two highest single game passer ratings of McNabb's long postseason career. In the Super Bowl loss with Owens, a rating of 75.4. Is that three game sample size too small to make a sweeping conclusion? Probably, but if we're being honest, the 14 game sample size with Owens has a similar problem.

In conclusion, it's fair to say that Owens made McNabb a better regular season QB. It's fair to say that there's no evidence he helped him be a better QB when it counted most.

CONCLUSION. All of this is not to say that Terrell Owens is a bad football player, was a bad player for the Eagles or was not a net positive for the Eagles when he was on the field (due to injuries or suspensions, Owens missed 37% of the available games over the two seasons he was with the team). The single point that should be taken away from this is that, relative to the hype given at the time and the reputation he enjoys with Eagles fandom even now, Owens is almost certainly the most overrated player to suit up in midnight green, possibly ever.