Good Riddance!

The other night at dinner, my roommate Leonard and I were having a heated debate about the whole T.O. fiasco with the Eagles. Lenny said a couple things that at the time that seemed absurd to me but that I was hard-pressed to disprove (due to a lack of quantitative evidence that would prove him wrong). Here are a couple things that he said that didn't sit real well with me:

"The Eagles are so stupid. They are paying him 8 million dollars a year and now they are just going to throw that all away instead of having the best player in the league on the field winning football games for them."
He went on to say: "By de-activating him they will be throwing away 5 million dollars on nothing; they would be retarded to do this."

Now that I have a good counter-argument compiled with statistics to back it up, let's begin to examine Lenny's comments. First of all, it is a fair assessment for him to say that Terrell is the most talented football player in the NFL; he proved that over the course of his career with the 49ers and in his his first season with the Eagles last year when he had 1,200 receiving yards in only 14 games. He also proved his toughness and commitment by playing in the Super Bowl despite not being medically cleared to play. No one is questioning his ability or physical toughness and willingness to play through injuries; what is being questioned is his ability to co-exist with his teammates and coaches.
He has always had a history of being a locker room headache which is why the 49ers were so willing to deal him in the first place. Following a year in which Jeff Garcia led a sub-par 49ers team to the playoffs and was selected to the Pro Bowl, Owens told an interviewer that Garcia was not a skilled quarterback committed to winning and called him gay despite the fact that he was dating a Playboy playmate at the time. The Eagles saw from Day 1(when he chewed out offensive coordinator Brad Childress) what they were getting, but his performance on the field was enough for them to look the other way. However, the honeymoon didn't last long. A season and a half after he joined Philadelphia and signed a 7 year incentive-laden deal with them(I'll come back to this in a minute) he has likely played his last game with them; in that time period he has insulted and alienated everyone in the organization from offensive coordinator Brad Childress(whom he called out again during spring training) to Andy Reid( who he also confronted during spring training, which resulted in a week suspension) to of course, his Pro-Bowl quarterback Donovan McNabb(who he called out in the off-season for not playing well in the 4th quarter of the Super Bowl because he was sick, and of course more recently put down again by suggesting that the Eagles would be better off with ancient Brett Favre at the helm, contradicting himself by ignoring the fact that his QB has played hurt all season without complaining, going out on the field so his team has a chance to win). Do I even need to mention him calling out the entire organization, calling them "classless" and getting into a physical fight with team advisor and former Eagle Hugh Douglas?
The Eagles were willing to let T.O. be T.O. and occasionally look the other way when he acted out but he took it way too far and it's about time they cut ties with him. But is this a stupid, expensive move for them to make?
When Lenny suggested that T.O. is making $"8" million a year, he was in the same ballpark of what Owens' contract appears to be as quoted by Sports Illustrated and ESPN and everyone else when he signed: a 7 year deal worth 48.9 million dollars which looks as though it boils down to $7 million a year. However after researching things further, it seems as though it is full of incentives and the money is not spread out evenly from year to year; in other words the Eagles were intelligently giving themselves an out when they drew up the contract. Owens is only making $3.25 million a year this season; during the 4 games where he will be suspended from the team without pay he will be losing about $200,000 per game; during the final five games after the Eagles de-activate him, they will have to pay him, but this will only amount to about a million dollars of wasted money, which seems like a lot of money to destitute college students such as ourselves but is pocket change to a thriving professional football organization. In short, the Eagles knew they were gambling but were smart enough to leave themselves an out; it is integral to team chemistry and the stability of the organization that they get rid of T.O. as soon as possible, and there's no way in hell that he will still be on their roster by next spring when he is slated to receive a $5 million incentive bonus if he is still on the team. They knew it was risky, it didn't work out, and it's time for the Eagles to move on. Good Riddance!
Perhaps they should go back to winning with the T.O.-less formula that brought them to 4 straight NFC Championship games and won them the NFC bid to the Super Bowl last year: Donovan McNabb carrying the team to victory despite meagerly-talented no-name receivers and an inconsistent running game.
Wait, what am I saying? Obviously McNabb sucks and is just the media's aggrandized attempt to elevate a black quarterback to stardom...