Cold, Hard Football Facts.com: The T stands for terrific, not tantrum

By Jonathan Comey

Cold, Hard Football Facts recognizer

It’s time to give Terrell Owens his due respect.

Too long, T.O. has been short for Totally Overexposed, or Tantrum Overload, or Terrible Oaf.

But if anything, Owens' achievements have been a Tad Overlooked.

The Cold, Hard Football Facts are clear, however: Terrell Owens, far from being a “cancer,” has been a prodigious winner everywhere he’s been and one of the greatest producers in NFL history.

Let’s cut right to the chase, shall we?

Over his career, T.O. has started 154 regular season games – and this noted divider of teams, this distraction on the field and off, has won 100 of those games.

Repeat: 100 wins, 54 losses, a 64.9 winning percentage.

Curious how that compares with other great players?

Well, Brett Favre, Mr. Winner himself, who has the all-time record for wins as a starting QB, has a career winning percentage of 63.2 – behind T.O.’s 64.9.

And here’s the clincher: in the 32 games T.O. didn’t start over his career, his teams are a combined 11-21 without him. That’s a 34.3 percent winning percentage, not so good.

Yet Owens has continued to have this ridiculous rep as a “team killer.” Does a team-killer help a club win 65 percent of the games that he starts?

No.

The only thing that’s killed his teams has been his absence – usually by injury, although he was basically blackballed by the Eagles in 2005. Was it for good reason? Perhaps. He's always been a handful, and the Eagles decided that they’d rather lose without him than win with him – a puzzling choice, and one that came to direct fruition. The 2005 Eagles were 4-3 with him, 2-7 after he was forced exile.

But Owens has been to the playoffs with all three of his teams (San Francisco, Philly, Dallas), and has been to the postseason in seven of his 11 seasons as a pro (with trip eight coming in a few weeks).

Including playoffs, he’s scored 118 touchdowns over what amounts to the last 10 seasons, and went over the 1,000-yard mark Sunday for the eighth time in his career (he was well on his way to 1,000 in 2005 before getting benched).

For his entire career, he's scored 128 TDs in 168 regular-season games. His 126 TD receptions in those 168 games averages a clean 0.75 TDs per game.

That's the third best TD-catching pace in the entire history of NFL football. The only two players ahead of him are:

Hall of Famer Don Hutson (99 TD catches in 116 games; 0.85 per game), who played for the Packers in the 1930s and 1940s and remains the most dominant receiver in history
and Owens contemporary Randy Moss (117 TD catches in 148 games; 0.79 per game, including his 4-TD-catch performance vs. Buffalo Sunday night).

Does T.O. have some emotional issues? Yes. Is he an ass at times? Sure.

But he’s also one of the greatest players and winners in NFL history, and no amount of media overexposure should deflect from that basic truth.

When it’s all said and done, history isn’t going to remember sit-ups in the driveway, shouting matches on the sidelines – it’s going to remember incredible catches in big games, and numbers that will be among the best ever.

Terrell Owens.

Terrific. OK?