Jack and Kevin,

It's odd to be discussing TO right now, with the draft only a couple of weeks away, but it'll probably feel like a highly rational topic compared to what we are reduced to in the dog days of June, so...

Ever since the days of Montana, Rice and Lott I've made habit of following the continuing careers of players who started out in San Francisco. Heck, I even started watching more Denver Broncos games than called for after that #!%$*#% Bill Romanowski joined them. It's a weird kind of loyalty, I admit. And it doesn't flow in the other direction either: if a player comes to the 49ers after having begun his career elsewhere, he has to earn his stripes before I consider him worthy. Rickey Jackson is a good example of a guy I warmed to right away. There are many others, including Randy Moss, to whom I never opened up.

That said, in my opinion, Terrell Owens is the second best wide receiver to play the game in the history of the NFL. He started his career as a 49er and he made a few of the best plays in the franchise's history. He's also a narcissist who has acted out the residue of psychological damage caused by his mother's abandonment of him on a couple of high-profile QBs. I don't refute that he created unwelcome vibes late in his SF days or in Philadelphia. I have always believed that you cannot totally separate an athlete's on-field performance from his off-field behavior, and Owens' stellar achievements on the field are certainly tainted by some of his antics on the sidelines, in locker rooms or even after scoring TDs. But at the same time, he was the best player on the 49ers when he was released, the best player on the Eagles even when was injured, as in that Super Bowl performance, and at least tied for best player on the Cowboys when he was there. He was better than Johnson in Cincinnati and on his way to a Pro Bowl season when he was injured again. And yet he had made impolitic comments about his QBs and was indelibly cast as a villain in the NFL media theater.

But there are villains and villains. Owens, for all his faults, always gave 100 percent effort on the field. He seems always to have abided by the good-citizen ethos instilled as best she could by his grandmother. He was not a thug like Randy Moss. He's an egotist for sure, but not the type who selfishly takes plays off during a game because he's not a primary target.

That's why I was so ticked off that the 49ers signed Moss last year instead of Owens. Given a choice between a guy who might drop a pass, as Owens did more often than he should, and a guy who might not even be in the spot where he could be passed to, as Moss did more often than he should, I would take Owens every time. I also happen to believe that even with the injury and time out of the game, Owens would have made a better fit with the type of offense Harbaugh and Roman were trying to present last year.

I recognize that Owens is 40 and might not ever play another down in the NFL, but because he started as a 49er, and was so special in the red and gold uniform, I can't help but want to see his name at #2 on the all-time WR TDs, catches and yards lists and not that jerk Moss.

Phew, I'm glad to finally get that off my chest. It's a highly obscure bit of fan obsessive-compulsive silliness, but I dare hope that you can relate, no?

Last Edited By: Win80 04/15/13 09:04 PM. Edited 1 times.