On a brisk San Francisco Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1992, hyperactive young halfback Ricky Watters poked his head into a star-studded 49ers huddle and made a heated request.
“Man, I was open . You gotta get me the ball!” Watters raved to quarterback Steve Young. “You gotta turn the ‘Watter’ on!”
Young, in the midst of a second-quarter scoring drive, glared back at Watters. So did wideouts Jerry Rice and John Taylor and tight end Brent Jones, all former or future Pro Bowlers. Finally, Jones responded.
“Dude, get in line,” he said, cracking up everyone in the huddle besides Watters. “Are you kidding me? That’s Jerry Rice. He wants the ball. Then come me and JT. Give me a break.”
By that point, even Watters was laughing.
That amusing memory from the Niners’ glory years is useful when breaking down the pseudo controversy over Terrell Owens’ comments following the Cowboys’ 26-24 defeat to the Commanders last Sunday.
When asked during a news conference if he felt he’d gotten the ball enough, Owens, who was thrown to 18 times and had a pair of rushing attempts on end-arounds, answered, “I would say no. I’m a competitor, and I want the ball.”
Oooooooooooooooooh.
Owens has said some preposterous and divisive things over the course of his 13-year career. In San Francisco, he took it upon himself to speculate publicly about quarterback Jeff Garcia’s sexual orientation. In Philadelphia, a couple of months after the team came within three points of winning a championship, he questioned quarterback Donovan McNabb’s toughness, saying, “I wasn’t the one who got tired in the Super Bowl.”
On each of those occasions, he deserved to be ripped. This time? Give me a break.
To understand Owens, you have to consider the NFL culture in which he was raised. When he arrived in San Francisco as a third-round draft pick in 1996, he was a wide-eyed rookie who said little and soaked up everything around him.
Watters and Taylor were gone by then, but Young, Jones and Rice remained. Rice, especially, was the veteran on whom Owens tried to model his approach. And Rice, in addition to being unquestionably the greatest receiver (if not player) in history, was a total ball-hog with a penchant for moodiness.
Stunningly, Rice’s bad moods often corresponded with the times in which he had fewer passes thrown his way.
At least Owens’ latest comments came after a tough defeat. I saw Rice, on multiple occasions over a number of seasons, blast the 49ers’ play-calling after games San Francisco won, sometimes by comfortable margins.
Whether the offensive coordinator was Mike Holmgren, Mike Shanahan or Marc Trestman, Rice felt free to rip away. It made for some decent, one-day copy in the era before Internet omnipotence, and it might have caused a bit of tension in the meeting room or on the practice field.
Mostly, however, players and coaches shrugged it off, because they knew that part of what made Rice the greatest was the psychotic competitive drive that fueled his sporadic outbursts.
Besides, it wasn’t as if Rice was alone. He might’ve been the only one airing his frustrations publicly, but as Jones recalls, “Our thought was, ‘Never run, unless it’s fourth-and-inches.’ And even then, we (receivers) still wanted the ball. If we didn’t throw it every play, we weren’t happy.”
Owens, of course, has a way of magnifying his unhappiness to the point where teammates and coaches can become disgusted and alienated. I don’t think that’s what happened here. He caught seven passes for 71 yards and a touchdown, and he was frustrated that he couldn’t do more. A combination of tight coverage from Shawn Springs and Carlos Rogers and a lack of coordination with quarterback Tony Romo kept Owens from catching any of those other 11 balls thrown his way.
Asked if he felt he became more involved in the offense after halftime, Owens said, “Everybody recognized that I wasn’t really getting the ball in the first half. I’m pretty sure everybody watching the game recognized it. People in the stands recognized it. I think my team recognized it. I didn’t quit. I kept fighting and trying to keep running my routes and trying to get open.”
Did the statement sound a tad narcissistic? Perhaps. Could he have blown off the question? Absolutely.
Was it a big deal? Please.
Yet plenty of people in my business saw it differently. One of them, former Cowboys great Emmitt Smith, said on Fox Sports Radio’s “Out of Bounds” Wednesday, “When you make a statement about the offense needing to go through you, and you have had an opportunity to make plays for your team on that particular day in that particular game [to] the tune of 19 (actually 20) possible opportunities, and you make seven catches for only 71 yards, and you turn around and criticize somebody for not allowing you the opportunity to make more plays, then that’s absolutely ridiculous.”
I think Emmitt might be forgetting that, during his playing days, Cowboys wideout Michael Irvin was every bit the ball hog that Rice was – or that T.O. is now. There’s another infamous Watters story. When the young runner played in his first Pro Bowl following the ‘92 season, he made a similar demand for carries in the NFC huddle, screaming, “I’m the one the people are here to see.”
That didn’t go over well with the established stars in the huddle. The rest of them began demanding the ball as well, a theme that continued throughout the game. Rice and Irvin were particularly insistent. Later, the two wideouts waged an in-huddle argument over which one of them was the league’s most selfish player.
This is not a criticism of either receiving great, by the way. Wideouts are the sport’s divas, and most of the elite ones long for the ball like people in my business crave hotel points and free food.
That’s true of so many great athletes in other sports, too. Think Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan didn’t demand the ball, especially at the end of games? Think Kobe Bryant doesn’t? Hell, after Jordan’s first retirement, longtime Bulls No. 2 option Scottie Pippen got so upset at coach Phil Jackson for drawing up a last-possession shot in a playoff game for teammate Toni Kukoc that he refused to take the floor. (Kukoc nailed the game-winner anyway, proving that the basketball gods are shrewd and benevolent deities. But I digress … )
The reason Jerry Jones pays Owens the big bucks is because the Cowboys owner knows T.O. has so much faith in his own abilities that he wants the ball every single play. Trust me, the notion that Owens would chafe after not being able to carry his team to victory over a division rival is unremarkable to Jones, and to Romo.
On Tuesday, the Dallas Morning News reported that Owens had a “serious conversation” with Romo in the locker room after the game, one in which he vented his frustrations to the quarterback about specific throws and routes on which they were out of synch. The following day Owens denied that such a discussion had taken place, and Romo essentially backed him up, albeit a bit more vaguely.
Even if Owens did get in his quarterback’s grill, I still don’t think it’s overly significant. For one thing, Romo is smart enough to know Owens’ potential dissatisfaction in that context isn’t personal, and he has the perfect temperament for taking such competitive considerations in stride.
I also know that Romo, like Troy Aikman and Steve Young and Joe Montana and so many other successful quarterbacks before him, would rather have a pain-in-the-butt diva who pines for the ball but makes plays and battles his heart out on Sundays than an amiable good soldier who gets shy when the game is on the line.
Because of this, don’t be surprised if another needy, greedy receiver with outrageous skills gets his wish and ends up joining the Cowboys after this season. Earlier this week Bengals wideout Chad Ocho Cinco (or Johnson, or whomever he is while he and Reebok continue their financial stalemate), whose struggling team plays at Texas Stadium Sunday, reiterated his desire to relocate to Dallas, saying he had pined for a trade there over the offseason.
“I tried,” Ocho Cinco told reporters who cover the Cowboys. “I talked to 81 (Owens) almost every day, man. I love 81. We talk all the time. That would’ve been a circus. Let me tell you, I don’t mean to be funny. … I’m not trying to be rude … but if I was in Dallas, they would have to change all of our damn games to pay-per-view because you need to pay to see that (expletive). I’m serious. I’m so serious. They would have to put all the games on pay-per-view. Because you just can’t watch a show like that for free.”
Jones, I’m guessing, is all for it. I am too. I just have one request: Can the pay-per-view folks please put a camera and microphone in the huddle?
