The bellyaching over Terrell Owens not making it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame is getting tiresome. The ringleader of the bellyachers seems to be Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. Each day he seems to bring a fresh column to his website with a new Owens rant or criticism of a Hall voter. I should be more sympathetic to Florio and those with similar Hall of Fame opinions of Owens. After all, I went through the same thing with Cris Carter and his place in Canton. He had to wait six years. Not one of those denials seemed fair. Part of me thinks that Owens should wait six years simply because Carter had to do so.
Cris Carter career stats
Receptions: 1101
Targets: 1515
Yards: 13899
Touchdowns: 130
Terrell Owens career stats
Receptions: 1078
Targets: 1867
Yards: 15934
Touchdowns: 153
Looking only at statistics, both Carter and Owens deserve to be in the Pro Football of Fame. It took Carter six years to get there. Why would it surprise anyone if it takes Owens more than two? There's been a receiver line outside of Canton for about a decade. Every receiver not named Jerry Rice has had to wait in it. Monk, Reed, Brown, Carter, Harrison. Why shouldn't Owens wait in it as well? Carter's best years were the 2.5 years that he caught passes from Warren Moon. Those were also the only years that he caught passes from a Hall of Fame quarterback. A Hall of Fame quarterback that was at the end of his career. Carter also benefited from a dynamite, revival year from Randall Cunningham in 1998. Other than that Carter had to deal with a revolving door of Vikings quarterbacks throughout the 1990s. Some of them were of the Sean Salisbury variety. Carter still managed to put up Hall of Fame numbers. Owens put up Hall of Fame numbers with Hall of Famer Steve Young, excellent-to-elite Donovan McNabb and Tony Romo, and the limited-yet-efficient Jeff Garcia throwing to him. That's a significant upgrade to the assembly line that Carter saw. The Hall of Fame is an individual honor but football is very much a team game. Looking only at their respective quarterbacks, Terrell Owens had an easier path to splashy receiving numbers than Cris Carter. Again, it took Carter six years to get to Canton. Owens still has three years to beat that wait. Why all the angst over two years?
My biggest problem with Owens' career and the respect given to it is his hands. He didn't have Hall of Fame hands. In my book, a Hall of Fame receiver should have Hall of Fame hands. He led the league in dropped passes twice. No Hall of Fame receiver should come close to doing that even once. It took Owens 352 more passes to catch 23 fewer passes than Carter. Not all of those passes that didn't end up in Owens' shaky hands were drops but too many of them were. The supposedly simple act of catching a football often seemed to elude Owens. At times in comical fashion. That doesn't mean that he wasn't a great football player but it does mean that he wasn't a very good receiver. Most of the voters and talkers that criticize Owens criticize him for his cancerous attitude. They seem to gloss over his hands. That's a mistake.
As for that cancerous attitude. Florio makes light of it. In his most recent rant he mentions that Steve Young vouched for Owens as a teammate. Of course Young vouched for Owens as a teammate because the then young receiver was on his best behavior in those years. First of all, he was the young kid on a veteran team. More importantly, he was the young kid receiver opposite Jerry Rice. Owens answered to those future Hall of Famers. He wasn't a nuisance in San Francisco until after Young retired and Rice moved on to the Oakland Raiders. When Owens moved on to the Philadelphia Eagles and later to the Dallas Cowboys everything was beautiful at first in both places. He didn't even last two years in Philadelphia and only three years in Dallas. Each stay ended up being a nightmare. The Eagles ended up feeling so much better about their team without him that they paid him to stay away. That should say it all. Owens was often looking for his next team in the 2000s, As a Minnesota Vikings fan, I didn't want any part of him. Even during those receiver-hungry, post-Randy Moss years. Shitty hands. Shitty attitude. I'd rather see that play out with 31 other teams.
Terrell Owens was a fantastic football player. At times it seemed like the only thing that could stop him was his shaky hands. Opposing defenses too often were helpless. Eventually his attitude rivaled those hands as an opponents best defense against his great talent. He's a Hall of Fame football player. but there are simply too many questionable aspects to his career to make him a first- or even second-ballot Hall of Famer. There are enough questions that a Cris Carter-like wait shouldn't be a surprise. I once thought that people were out of their minds when they said that the long wait wouldn't matter once Carter finally made it. Well, it turns out they were right. Six years of anger and frustration did fade away when the Hall finally called. That will happen for Terrell Owens one day.
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