Is Terrell Owens comparible to ....
 

Dan Marino ??
** 2nd most career passing yards, 2nd most career passing TD

Walter Payton ??
** 2nd most career rushing yards, 2nd most career rushing attempts, 4th most career rushing TDs

****
Terrell ..
** 2nd most career receiving yards, 2nd most career receiving TDs, 5th most career receptions.

Just wondering how people perceive Terrell. If it weren't for Jerry Rice (who, lets be real - THAT GUY wasn't even human); a statistical argument could be put up that he is the best WR ever.

I know, I've never thought of him in a Payton, Marino way - Does he deserve to be in that mold ?

Hmm ... in terms of excellence/success at his position? I'd say yeah.

In terms of impact on his team/the game/etc? Nah, not seeing it.

Marino and Payton weren't a cancer to their teams so not anywhere close.

Pretty sure that wasn't his point

How does he rate in ball-dropping? I remember seeing him regularly be in the leaders each year in this category. Yeah, he caught a lot of balls ... because he was thrown a lot of balls.

Purely stats wise, yup.

But as Jon and EF said, that's where the comparison ends. I wonder how many Super Bowls his teams may have went to if he wasn't such a pain in the ass.

EDIT: I'm assuming we are talking about his potential Hall of Fame resume? We know off the field antics don't seem to matter (LT), but, will his on the field and in the locker room personality affect his chances of getting into the HOF?

Sure it was. The question is does he deserve to be looked at in the same way as them. You can;t overlook the fact that all he does is blow up a team that he is on so it's a quick and easy NO.

The point was just to grab some opinions of TO. His personality allows me to easily forget how much success he has achieved. In all honesty, when I think of the best receivers of all time off the top of my head - his name wouldn't be where his stats say it should be on the list. Was just curious how others rated him :)

Is he Ty Cobb ?? Talented, highly successful, a giant DBag ? Although, Ty gets his props - and it seems Terrell gets no love.


Interesting question IMO, and was one of the first things I thought of too when I posed the question. Sadly the NFL doesn't track drops. But, also - would it really matter ? I'm sure the list would include all the all-time greats. Anyone with a lot of targets would probably have a lot of drops.

More interesting though ... what would that mean ? That he was targeted often ? Why ? Because he runs great routes and is open ? .. Because he has the confidence of his QBs (even if they don't like him) ? Because he's the best option to catch the ball, if everyone is covered ?

An interesting character/career.

I think he's going to be waiting a while. One, look up the top stat guys for receiving and not as many are in like you think they would be. Chris Carter not being in to me is kind of head scratching and he was no where need the cancer Owens was. Ricky Waters is another case of a person putting up HoF numbers, but not being in due to their attitude. LT's antics to me happened well after he was in the Hall.

That's exactly what I'm thinking. If Chris Carter has been waiting this long, I wouldn't be surprised at all for TO having to wait a long, long time. As far as stats go for active players, is anyone close to TO? Moss, Harrison, Wayne?

Maybe my memory isn't quite right, but, I do seem to remember LT having some off the field issues while still with the Giants. I could be completely wrong though.

Hell, Cris Carter is still waiting for people to spell his name correctly.

I believe Football Outsiders has a lot of info on drops, catch rate, etc. I can't find a specific article right now ranking Owens, but I'm sure there's info in there on the subject. I think cumulative stat totals don't tell us much.

Otherwise know as the Skip Bayless Argument.

Only four guys have held the career record for most major league strikeouts since 1928: Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Willie Stargell and Reggie Jackson.

And yes, Terrell Owens is Reggie Jackson in this scenario.

No, his point was that he was a great WR who has not (and likely will never) have won it all. Like Karl Malone of football.

I'd rather see Tim Brown get in before Carter. Tim Brown's list of QB's is a whose who of the bad Raider QB's until Rich Gannon for a few years near the end of his career. He never had a HOF guy back there

The original poster specifically asked how people perceive TO, especially in light of who his statistical comparisons were at the other skill positions. He didn't even mention winning championships, and Payton has a ring... EF's response seems spot on to me.

The fact that TO was such a massive cancer and such a horrible teammate absolutely is a massive knock against him in my eyes.

Just against his contemporaries, I think Moss is held in higher regard by most fans. Was there ever a point that you thought TO was the best receiver in football? I've considered him Top 5 for a long stretch of it, but I don't think there was ever a point where I thought Owens was hands-down the best at his position.

80s/90s QBs, maybe Marino fits that same mold given some of the people playing at the same time. I'll still never understand rating Elway as a better QB than Marino, but that probably is in part because Marino is my favorite football player ever.

Payton - would have to ask someone who saw more of his career. Even from Chicago, by the time I really appreciated football Walter's numbers were starting to drift back to the pack. But I'm guessing there was a post-OJ period where Payton was clearly the best RB in the game.

I think Emmitt Smith might be a better comparison to Owens. Huge numbers, but people really felt like Sanders was a better talent/RB and slide Smith down their personal ranks accordingly.

Would be curious where people have Owens on their own "all time" lists of WRs. I'm thinking bottom of the top 10 is about as far as I would go with him. Instinctively, I think of Marvin Harrison ahead of Owens even though I know that is probably wrong at this point. Owens didn't have the luxury of Manning throughout his career, yet his numbers have started to pull away from Harrison's.

Spare me with Tim Brown. Is there any debate at all about who was the better receiver, at his established prime? Seriously, that's just laughable, Owens was by leaps and bounds the better on-field player. Career accumulated statistics are just a rotten way to argue greatness -- does anyone at the WR position actually add to his legacy by tacking on two more seasons of mediocre football to accumulate another 1,200 yards and move up the career rankings?

Terrell Owens is the best receiver ever. His numbers are great now, and just imagine how much better they'd be if his quarterbacks would stop hating on him and throw the football his way.

Fixed.

I think the OP has the right idea - I don't think Owens is thought of in the way his numbers would suggest. He's overshadowed his own play with his personality, and so I think someone like Reggie Jackson is a good comparison. I don't follow baseball, but I know Jackson simply for his personality, not for anything much to do with his play.

This thread opened my eyes a bit. I agree that, in my head, he's not a top-ten all time WR even though his numbers would easily place him in the top five.

In short, he hit a lot of HRs during the playoffs for the biggest name team in baseball.

It's too bad Football Outsiders doesn't seem to have anything on this, as they have the statistics that would help separate out things like QB value, how stats have changed over hte years, strength of competition.

But this site http://www.pro-football-reference.com/blog/?p=1345 has some interesting work using the stats to try to compare WRs over different eras. Owens does rank well, but looking through this article and the next one, it appears to me he benefited a lot from increased passing in this era, while not dominating the way Moss has.

This is the major problem of judging an individual in a team sport. The greatest wide receiver of all time had 2 of the greatest qb's throwing to him. Emmit Smith had one of the best offenses and probably the best o line.

TO did great( more or less) with great qb's. And that aint nothing.

I think qb's can be bit of an exception, what they lose out on is the ring debate.

Back to the original question.

I have a higher regard for TO's success on the field than Marino's.

As much as I like Payton, I'm hard pressed to to say he was a better running back than TO is/was a receiver.

I'd definitely be interested in hearing the rationale behind this.

Well I've never been a Marino fan. I guess that plays a big part in this.

As for TO's role in my assessment. He rivaled Moss in his dominance.

He was a tremendous force on the field. Look at what he did for the Eagles. With him, they are Donovan Mcnabb sacking it up in the fourth quarter away from a Super Bowl win. Without him, also rans.

He was a great receiver in his prime. Yes he was a cancer, but I'd argue that the only guy with better skills than him as a contemporary was also a bigger cancer.

But the Eagles made their playoff run to the Super Bowl without Owens, no? He only came back for the Super Bowl.

Having watched him week in, week out while he was an Eagle, the only other receiver I can compare him to that I've seen regularly is Moss. I'm not judging his whole career because I didn't see him that much with the 49ers but he had an explosiveness and a play making ability that blew me away.

True...He only helped them to a fantastic start where he set the league on fire with his numbers, and helped Mcnabb finally live up to his reputation. Then Owens busted his ass to comeback from what should have been a season ending injury to lead the team in receiving in the Superbowl.



What he said, but I did follow him as a niner.

I'm one of the few that have argued that he was better than Moss in some of the years they were both in the NFC.

I don't think I would even compare Moss to TO (assuming their prime years). I think TO was hands down far superior to Moss in nearly every way possible.

Moss could embarrass mediocre CBs and put up huge numbers on a given day. But he also got shut down on a number of important games & against top defenses. Moss was very difficult to stop when he showed up...but was also much easier to rattle and take out of the game (again...talking REAL defenses here).

TO was so much more difficult to shut down due to his speed AND size. I never felt like TO was a non-factor in any game including top notch defenses. I'm sure there were exceptions here & there but TO was much more of a freak of nature athlete than Moss.

As for the OP question...I think he's in the conversation for 2nd. I'd have to give it some more thought, but offhand I don't think of TO as the 2nd best WR ever. I think of him as top 10...probably top 5...but not #2.

Who is your 2 then? Cris Carter?

I'm not entirely sure...Carter is top 5 imo so maybe.

It would have to be somebody that could have dominated even the best defenses of their day (to the extent rules made it possible). Hard to compare some of the older guys since the rules have changed so much over the years.

Honestly...as much as it pains me to say it (as a Giants fan)...but Michael Irvin was incredible as well & definitely showed up and faced some real competition over his career.

dola,

Andre Reed comes to mind as a possible top 5 guy as well(at least top 15 and likely top 10).

Yeah, it is painful to me, too (because he is a pompous windbag) but Irvine might be two.

I may be over-defending TO, but I think he takes a lot of heat for things that weren't his fault. He was by all accounts a great teammate until his last season in San Francisco when he went all Keyshawn Johnson in his book. It was a messy exit, but he was a key player on a lot of great Niners teams that just missed out on the Super Bowl. If anything, TO played a great second banana to Rice even though he was on the rise and Rice on the way down.

The first year in Philadelphia, he was the straw that stirred the drink. He had a great performance in the Super Bowl on a freakin' broken leg. His exit in Philly was messy, but can you blame it all on him? TO wasn't the first and certainly wasn't the last guy to make a messy exit from Philly.

The meltdown in Dallas was bizarre, but again, he was only the latest dysfunctional on a team with a lot of dysfunctionals. I don't think there's also any doubt that TO had some personal issues, which came to light in Dallas. I don't give him a free pass for that, because ultimately it's up to him to be responsible for his actions.

Alluded in some other posts, but I think it's also interesting that many of the most prolific receivers were hot messes. Marvin Harrison had a bigger flameout and meltdown at the end of his career that TO ever thought about. Moss has been Owens-squared. Cris Carter and Michael Irvin were drug addicts.

Whatever happened to that Harrison murder thing, or whatever that was?

Here's what Wikipedia says:

Marvin Harrison - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Connections to shooting incidents


Harrison was sued by Dwight Dixon, a convicted drug dealer who was shot outside Chuckie's Garage, a North Philadelphia business owned by Harrison, on April 29, 2008.[2][3] The two men had two altercations earlier in the day when Harrison denied Dixon entry into a sports bar he owned and operated. Dixon alleged that Harrison was the gunman who shot at him. On January 6, 2009, Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham confirmed that it was Harrison's gun that fired shots at Dixon but they had been unable to determine who pulled the trigger.[4]

The Philadelphia District Attorney also stated that she was not going to pursue charges in this case due to conflicting witness statements. Dixon, who had initially given the police a false name and claimed he was robbed by two men when interviewed at the hospital,[5] was subsequently convicted of filing a false report for this incident on January 28, 2009. He was sentenced to 6 months probation. Dixon's attorney reportedly sought a new trial as the conviction violated Dixon's parole in an unrelated case.[6] Harrison is also being sued by Robert Nixon, a victim caught in the crossfire of the shooting who identified Harrison as the shooter in a statement to police.[7]

Dixon died on July 21, 2009 when he was shot several times while in his car outside a building two blocks away from Harrison's sports bar. On June 16, 2010, Shaun Assael of ESPN The Magazine reports that police confiscated a 9mm handgun from Harrison during a routine traffic stop on Wednesday in Philadelphia. Police will test the gun to see if it matches three spent 9mm shell casings that ended up inside the truck driven by the late Dwight Dixon at the scene of an April 2008 shooting. Dixon, who eventually was shot and killed after filing a civil lawsuit, claimed that the casings came from a second gun that Harrison fired. Authorities already have matched other bullets to a separate gun that Harrison owns -- and that he admitted was in his possession on the day the shooting occurred. Police found the gun during a search of Harrison's Escalade. The stop occurred as Harrison drove the vehicle the wrong way on a one-way street. Harrison claimed he did not have a gun. But police believed they saw Harrison put what appeared to be a weapon in the console between the two front seats. They concluded that they had probable cause to search the vehicle, and they found the gun. [8] The FBI has become involved in the investigation.

So... it's been almost two years since this has happened, with a lot of evidence against Harrison... and nothing has really come of it yet other than "the FBI has become involved?"

Wow, I am shocked at how little love Payton is getting in this thread. During the late 70s and early 80s, Payton WAS the Chicago Bears. Not only that, the guy did everything. He could make you miss, he could run over you, and he could leap over the pile. He could catch out of the backfield, he threw 9 TD passes over his career, and he was a feared blocker.

Ya know, I'm only 39, but this discussion is making me feel reallllllllly old.

Did he not also return kicks?

I previously argued that TO was occasionally better than Moss when they were both in the NFC, but given what Moss did in New England before he had went on his own dysfunctional rhapsody, I think he is more deserving of a second best all time than TO, Irvin, Harrison or pretty much anyone else I can think of.



I like Payton. He was a very good running back. Hall of Famer. Same goes with Marino. I guess I may have misunderstood the OP's question, because I've never considered Marino or Payton as "second best" of all time. In order to do that I'd have to consider them as in the running for best of all time, and I just don't see it for either of them challenging for the mythical top spot.

Seems others may have as well. I guess I didn't really have a 'question'. I was just gathering opinions of TO. In particular, I wanted to point out where he was statistically compared to the players who are his statistical "equals" at other skilled spots.

I was a little shocked when I had recently heard where he ranked all time vs other wideouts, and thought : "No way do I view him the same as other players who rank similar at their positions .. I wonder if others feel the same or different".

It seems this board says his D-Baggery puts a pretty big stain on his 'legacy'. I'd venture to guess from other inquiries that football fans as a whole feel the same.

Is strange how that works. A player with the same list of accomplishments in some parallel universe, but took the time to shine his reputation probably would be regarded totally different. Maybe if TO had signed some more autographs for kids, or kept to his self a bit, and spit out a few more cliches .. he'd be this huge fan favorite that the majority of people "rooted for". Maybe a first ballot hall of famer, that just didn't ever get that ring.

I hold Walter Payton in much higher esteem than I hold T.O.

Is it "fair," or based on examining spreadsheets of their career? Absolutely not. I do have a sense of awe thinking about Sweetness that I don't have for TO.

By the same token, admitting a certain bias, I don't think I would automatically put Emmitt Smith in my list of top-5 greatest backs ever.

The OP asked about "perceptions" vs "output," and it is interesting the extent to which I and obviously others would elevate or demote guys based on things other than raw stats.

This is the craziest thing I have read in this thread. Perhaps you worded this incorrectly and meant to have Moss and TO switched around.

As for the discussion I feel TO was a better WR than Cris Carter/Tim Brown however because of TO's issues I think Carter and Brown deserve to be in before TO.

Not sure what is crazy about it. Moss could be shut down, very similar to the way the Patriots' defense in their prime years shut down the Colts by simply being physical with the WRs. But you couldnt be a mediocre CB to do this...hence why Moss was capable of exploding one day & not showing up the next.

That was not possible to do with TO. He was very capable of going deep (though not the jumpball skills Moss had), catching tough passes over the middle (Moss barely sniffed the middle), and simply showed up every day against the great and mediocre defenses...not just the mediocre defenses.

I'm not sure why Moss has this mystique about him. The Giants, Ravens, Eagles, and many other very good or better defenses in any given season put the guy in his place pretty regularly. Not the same with TO...not nearly as often.