It's Donovan McNabb-goes-back-to-Philly week, and we do love our reunion games in the NFL, don't we? With as much player and coach movement as the league features these days, every season provides a handful of reunion games of varying degrees of significance and intrigue. But some of them, like this week's, really deserve the screaming headline treatment.
Week 1 on the training camp trail ... From a very deep team in San Antonio (Dallas) to the Big Top in Kentucky (Cincinnati) to the NFL's men of mystery (Carolina) to the youngest veteran team in the league (Atlanta) to the team (Miami) determined not to let the AFC East become a two-horse race -- and, by the way, I like its chances. Along the way, three stories intercede: Albert Haynesworth, the business of football threatening to tear the San Diego Chargers asunder and the retirement of Sean Morey.
SI.com has dispatched writers to report on the 32 NFL training camps across the country. Here's what Peter King had to say about the Bengals camp in Georgetown, Ky. For an archive of all camp postcards, click here.
CINCINNATI -- What did Cincinnati do to deserve this?
Terrell Owens reportedly has reached a contract agreement to join the Cincinnati Bengals. As the enigmatic, 36-year-old wide receiver gets ready to play for his fifth NFL team, here are four things we've learned about the recent developments:
Usually I'd say in the case of the Bengals chasing a player with serious baggage, that it's owner Mike Brown forcing a guy into Marvin Lewis' locker room, causing Lewis to roll his eyes and say, "How exactly am I supposed to handle all these divas?''
The majority of NFL fans may not have any interest in the Green Bay Packers' annual financial report that was released on Wednesday. They may not pay much attention to the issues that surround the labor talks between the league and the NFL Players Association (NFLPA). After all, in a battle between millionaire players and billionaire owner, what fans think hardly matters anyway, right?
1. The hit that launched a dynasty. When Jets linebacker Mo Lewis slammed into Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe near the sideline late in a Week 2 game at New York on Sept. 23, 2001, it initially looked like a very bad break for New England. The hit caused the Pro Bowl passer to suffer internal bleeding, knocked him out of action for weeks and forced the Patriots to play untested second-year backup Tom Brady long before they intended.
On the scale of Terrell Owens' postgame meltdowns, Monday night's postgame media snub doesn't even register. It was actually appropriate, considering all the Bills were heartbroken after they blew an 11-point fourth-quarter lead in a 25-24 loss (RECAP | BOX) to the Pats. But if Owens was disappointed with just two catches, he better get used to it, because Buffalo isn't likely to change much after almost pulling off the win with a nearly perfect offensive gameplan.
The first decade of the 21st century is rapidly coming to a close, and it's been one of the most explosive periods in pro football history -- especially on offense, where it seems new records were set each and every year.
DANA POINT, Calif. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we wrap up the NFL's annual meeting with a little table-hopping among the league's head coaching set, and more from the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resort...
Has anyone else noticed that in relocating himself from Dallas to Buffalo, Terrell Owens just went from playing for a team in the midst of a 12-year playoff-win drought to a team in the midst of a 13-year playoff-win drought?
When Turk Schonert took the call at home Saturday morning, and was told by Buffalo head coach Dick Jauron to be on alert for an unscheduled trip into the Bills team complex that afternoon, he had no idea the reason for the audible.
One way or the other, Terrell Owens will make an impact on the Bills, who signed the combustible wideout to a one-year, $6.5 million deal Saturday.
The acquisition of Terrell Owens significantly upgrades the Bills' offense. The six-time Pro Bowler gives the team a legitimate receiving threat opposite Lee Evans in the lineup. With Owens and Evans capable of winning one-on-one matchups, defensive coordinators will have to pick and choose which side to roll coverage. Evans has started to command double teams in coverage due to his big-play ability, but Owens' presence on the other side gives Buffalo another weapon to rely on against the rolled coverage.
Terrell Owens, a former San Francisco 49er and a former Philadelphia Eagle, is now a former Dallas Cowboy. The Cowboys released Owens late Wednesday, according to published reports.
The great debate in Dallas in these earliest days of the NFL offseason surrounds Terrell Owens' fate, and to some degree, I'm learning that reality depends on who you talk to.
No stranger to causing controversy, Terrell Owens of the Dallas Cowboys apologized Wednesday for joking earlier in the week that Jessica Simpson was a distraction for her star-quarterback boyfriend, Tony Romo.
• The Cowboys exploited the Redskins' inexperience at safety by attacking down the middle of the field. With the Redskins sitting two-deep and some three-deep zones, Tony Romo manipulated the safeties by looking outside before hitting Terrell Owens repeatedly down the seams. Two of Dallas' three second-half scores were the result of Washington's young safeties being out of position and unable to recover before the ball arrived.
With a diamond star pinned to the left lapel of his blue suit, Jerry Jones was waiting in the breezeway of Giants Stadium on Sunday afternoon when the door to the visitors' locker room swung open. In small clusters the Dallas Cowboys filed past him toward the field -- Terrell Owens, the mercurial receiver on his third NFL marriage; Wade Phillips, the quiet coach from the league's recycling bin; Tony Romo, the newly minted $67 million quarterback of obscure origin. When the team's new nosetackle, Tank Johnson, appeared in the door, Jones approached his latest reclamation project and offered some perspective on the set-to he was about to face. "Well, here we are," the owner told Johnson. "New York Giants, Dallas Cowboys. We're a little distance from four or five weeks ago." That's when the Cowboys were reeling from a painful loss to the Patriots and Johnson, who signed with Dallas on Sept. 18, had just begun practicing with the team.
Money Magazine: The Tickerupdated: Sun Dec 01 2002 00:01:00
--CONTRARY INDICATORS As if equity analysts weren't already in the doghouse, a soon-to-be-published academic study finds that their highest-rated stocks underperformed their lowest-rated ones in 20...
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