Owens Flunks NFL Public Relations 101

By: Chicago Sports Review

It’ll always be easy to find Terrell Owens. His is a path littered with massive smoke signals from all the burnt bridges.

And it’s actually getting close to the phrase one ESPN executive used to describe Keith Olbermann’s exit from the network back in the late ’90’s.

“He didn’t just burn bridges, he napalmed them.”

Yesterday, Detroit Lions quarterback Jeff Garcia responded to a Detroit Free-Press reporter about the current Owens soap opera by saying, “I really don’t have any thoughts. I don’t have to deal with it anymore, so that’s a good thing.”

Owens being reduced to “it” was inevitable. This is to become socially black-listed, when you are no longer a person, but an “it”, and the way in which people describe you implies a set of extenuating, pain-in-the-you-know-what circumstances. He is no longer a player, but a roving calamity, impressing his own brand of pleasure-meets-pain relevance on whatever team he occupies.

He is now an “it”. Perfect for an appearance as a Dr. Seuss bad guy.

The worst part about this is the public relations fiasco that Owens and his agent Drew Rosenhaus have allowed to fester. I asked one agent this week about that situation, who called Owen’s antics “mindless”.

From what I can tell, Owens has hired John Rocker LLC for his public relations work. I believe this is the same firm that advised Nate Newton on his new career.

T.O.: How can I gain favor with Eagles players and brass to get them to consider restructuring my contract?

Firm: Start by publicly throwing the teams most popular player and one of the leagues top coaches under the bus to the media.

Owens is like a child trying to get a better allowance who skips the whole cleaning your room routine and decides to show up at his mom’s PTA meeting to call her a whore who routinely burns books.

This is like John Madden trying to get a raise by calling Al Michaels a wind bag.

“I got your miracle right here Michaels!”

Negotiations should be left to the back room, where Rosenhaus has always worked best. For as loud as the agent is, he has done exceptional work on behalf of many clients, the reason for which his NFL player roster is the envy of any agent in the business. It’s just too bad he can’t negotiate his client down to less than one inflammatory comment per week. Unfortunately for him, some of Owens’ halfway valid points are being completely lost because of the many mindless ones he continues to raise.

Sabermetrics in Football

It’s no pure attempt to arouse the laptop-toting Sabermetricians that hover around baseball, but the Owens case is at least bringing about reasonable discussion of the same principles in football.

Underscoring this are sincere discussions about attaching actual value to a player based on his involvement in the game, or in baseball terms, creating a win-share stat for each player in football.

For instance, many coordinators and coaches will downplay the effect of a great receiver, saying that even a player of Owens’ caliber might touch the ball only 4-6 times a game. Compare that to a quarterback, who has to handle the ball on every play, and throw it routinely up to 30 times a game. Running backs are protecting a quarterback when they’re not carrying the ball up to 30 times a game…and so on.

While a lot of this is just pure TO-backlash (for which I have little disdain) it does signify an elemental shift in analysis for players in the NFL, and will effect them where they care most: their wallets.

One other factor that underscores this point is the Atlanta Braves principle for football. Like a pitcher assigned to the Braves, a receiver assigned to catch passes from the likes of a Brett Favre, Peyton Manning or Tom Brady will instantly be of greater value statistically. How so?

Try Donald Driver, Deion Branch, Brandon Stokely…

These guys are classic examples of right place, right time receivers. And most of all, it’s the right guy throwing them the ball in a sound system. Nobody ever became a great receiver because “Tony Banks just throws such a sweet ball.”

You need a great one.

The one instance where I would defend Owens, Randy Moss, or any other clearly marquee talent is the difficult-to-quantify “decoy factor.” Even as each guy may catch just a handful of balls per game, if it takes a double team, a linebacker who has to constantly cheat to their side, and a cover-two safety who can’t leave that side of the field, you have a player who literally has to be gameplanned for, making the offense easier for everybody.

Still, you’ll hear more and more about Sabermetric-football theory soon. And naturally, you’ll have a new influx of peculiar statistics to learn, and corresponding stat nerds.

Lovely.

Pre-Season Whining

For the millions of fans who constantly cry about the many injuries that occur during pre-season, and in turn become complaints against the whole concept of the games existing at all, start whining to the coaches.

Last week, I saw something I would hope to never see in any game, much less an utterly meaningless pre-season affair.

Michael Vick was sacked. Twice!

Falcons fans and studio executives vomit and convulse when Vick sneezes, much less gets speared by Ray Lewis. And yet Falcons head coach Jim Mora Jr. was willing to subject his franchise quarterback to a pair of sacks.

Many consider this akin to warming somebody up for a marathon by having them run one, but it tells us something.

For all the injuries, fear and consternation expressed every year, the coaches have a sincere belief in the concept of reps.

Guys need ‘em. And even at the risk of injury, for the first quarter of four or five seemingly meaningless football games, even the best players will be forced to deal with nature and the utter surety that a few of them will lose a season due to injury.

Just ask Lovie Smith, who saw Rex Grossman go down in the second quarter, not the first, and will now be without him for months.

Better yet, ask Jerry Angelo.

Which Leads Me To…

The NFL is a league where careers, even great ones, are most often started as a replacement for the fall of someone else’s great career.

As Maverick said, “The list is long and distinguished.”

The current NFL pseudo-dynasty was started when a solid NFL quarterback was delivered a jarring hit that shook up his innards, had to sit out a couple months, and was replaced by a quarterback by the name of Tom Brady. This Brady guy had all the characteristics of an NFL bench lifer.

Average arm. A forty time in the five-somethings. An unremarkable, but solid college career.

So when the Bears saw Rex Grossman go down this week with a broken ankle, you could react two ways.

First, you could rightly take a shot at Bears GM Jerry Angelo, a guy hired through an executive search firm, who did nothing to shore up a position that destroyed the teams’ season last year when this same thing happened. Fact is, he failed to prepare for this, and not only that, he failed to prepare for the notion that Grossman, with six career starts, might not be a star in the making. Joey Harrington has started almost 40 games.

Grossman needed a solid, competitive backup who could push him for his job when he was healthy just as much as the Bears needed one when Grossman got hurt.

But to counter that, and to bring up the Brady point, no coach or GM with a clue has a guage that assures them of who will be a great NFL quarterback. It is a position dominated by unmeasurable elements. The Patriots knew as much about Tom Brady as the Bears know about Kyle Orton.

And isn’t that sweet.

In the absence of sound management, hope still finds a way to seep into the bludgeoned soul of a Bears fan.

Injuries and faint hope. Served weekly at Soldier Field.

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