Zo Knows: Terrell Owens Will Produce and Make the Buffalo Bills A Better Team

Sure, Terrell Owens doesn’t know when to shut his mouth. Yes, T.O. isn’t exactly the best teammate in the world. And while I, a Philadelphia Eagles fan, am certainly no T.O. apologist, the truth is, the man wins everywhere he goes. And that certainly won’t change in Buffalo.

Call it a coincidence or his own strategic selection of teams, but Terrell Owens always wins games for whomever he is playing for. The 49ers were coming out of the cellar as T.O. hit his stride, and once he did, they were one of the NFC’s best teams for a stretch.

When T.O. was with Philadelphia, there’s no doubt that he made the then Super Bowl contending Eagles even better.

And in 2006 when he went to Dallas, a team that had not won the division in 8 years, he immediately had the them in the playoffs, and the team won the division during T.O.’s second year with the Cowboys franchise.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand that T.O. selected good teams to go to, but the fact that he made good teams even better is particularly impressive—especially in the NFL, where free agent signings don’t ever work out as planned.

So are the Buffalo Bills about to be the next beneficiary of the T.O. talent boost?

No doubt!

Look, I’m not even going to go into the Buffalo Bills roster all that deeply. What I will say is that they have a mediocre quarterback, a decent offensive line, a budding young running back, a decent wide receiver and a mundane tight tend. All of which probably combine to make up a sub-par offensive team in the NFL.

However, when you add Terrell Owens to the Bills’ starting lineup, it is as if you were adding Manny Ramirez to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, Russell Martin and Orlando Hudson weren’t household names a year ago, but since Ramirez has joined the team, all of a sudden those guys have found baseball religion! It’s as if overnight Ethier turned into a budding star and Russell Martin became a hitting prodigy. But it really wasn’t about either of them. It was about Manny. And even with Manny’s poor fielding, steroid use, and all-around clownish behavior, Manny’s talent has overshadowed all of that, and he has single-handedly made the Dodgers the best team in baseball.

Now, here comes T.O. to the Bills, and I won’t be surprised to see the same thing happen in Buffalo. Yes, Lee Evans is a good receiver, but he’ll become great when Terrell Owens is demanding double teams on the other side of the field.

Trent Edwards has a good arm, but he’ll become a great quarterback when defenses begin shading the coverage in T.O.’s direction.

In addition, the Bills Marshawn Lynch broke a 1,000 yards last season, but he will score double-digit touchdowns with Owens lined up at wide receiver.

Don’t believe me? Well, you don’t have go back very far to see that Owens has already had these very same effects on his previous two teams.

Brian Westbrook was nothing more than a scat back before T.O. came to Philly in 2004, when Westbrook made his first Pro Bowl appearance.

And in Dallas, who the heck was Tony Romo before he had Terrell Owens to throw? Yes, yes. I know Romo didn’t play before T.O. came to town, but it’s no coincidence that Romo’s immediate success as a starter had a lot to do with the fact that his first two touchdown passes were to Terrell Owens, as were 9 of his first 17 career touchdown passes.

Anyone expecting Terrell Owens to do anything other than make the Bills a much better team this season, isn’t really thinking about the kind of effect this wide receiver has on a football team. To think that the Bills have any choice but to improve upon their 25^th offensive ranking last year is foolish. In fact, excluding the year T.O. got suspended, he has never been on an NFL football team that didn’t finish ranked in the top half of league in terms of offensive yardage. In fact, he has only been on a team that didn’t finish among the NFL’s top 10 offenses on two occasions, and in both situations his teams finished above .500.

So if you have the Bills and the under this season, you might want to think again. I’m not saying that the Bills are going to be the 2009 AFC East champions, but I wouldn’t put it past them to make the playoffs, or at the very least, finish above .500.

However, I know some of you T.O. detractors will point to T.O.’s increasing age. Well, there’s a lot to be questioned about a wide receiver that turns 36 this season. However, do we really have any reason to believe the man is slowing down significantly? The guy just averaged 15.2 yards per catch last season, which is above his career average. He just scored 10 touchdowns for a dysfunctional Dallas Cowboys offense, which didn’t have its starting quarterback for 3 games. And just ask yourself, has the man really shown any signs of slowing down? If he has, I must not have noticed when he scored that 75-yard touchdown in Week 12 last season.

As for those of you who would point to the T.O. Club and his off the field troubles, I haven’t forgotten the effect Owens has had on his 3 previous teams. Nevertheless, none of those “incidents” happened in the beginning of his tenures with the Eagles and Cowboys. No, teams acquiesce to T.O. in the beginning. It is in the end, when people are tired of him, that T.O. goes off the reservation.

In light of that, I’m not projecting 3 and 4 years down the road here—heck, I’m not even looking at the 2010 season, because I don’t even think he’ll be in Buffalo that long. But for 1 year and just 16 games, T.O. will be as happy as a Goldman Sachs banker with friends in the White House—only he won’t be making nearly as much money.

So prognosticators, fantasy geeks (myself included), and all fans of the game of football, listen carefully! As the Buffalo Bills and T.O. are set to hit training camp, I’m saying this loud and clear: Terrell Owens will make the Bills better, put up numbers, and be as happy at the end of the season as he was on signing day. And if he isn’t—well I’m sure he’ll find some way to get out of there.

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