On August 22 of this summer we posted on the blog the actual game-by-game stats of Terrell Owens his last 20 games as a Dallas Cowboy. The intent WAS NOT to demean T. O. but to show the profile of an agingf wide receiver who seemed in obvious decline. Much was made of Owens disruptive tendencies in the locker room. But the numbers posted on that day in late August suggested to me that Owens should be cut and not paid millions and millions and millions of dollars in salary simply because his production was absolutely not that of a lead receiver.

Buffalo gave him millions and millions and millions and here's what they've gotten for the money game-by-game through the first half of this season:

DATE       OPPONENT     CATCHES     YARDS    PLAYS OF 25 YARDS    TD'S

9-14          New Eng.                2                  46                        1                             0

9-20          Tampa Bay             3                   52                        1                             1

9-27           New Orl.                 0                     0                        0                              0

10-4           Miami                      3                   60                        1                              0

10-11        Cleveland                4                   44                        0                              0

10-18        N Y Jets                    3                   13                        0                              0

10-25        Carolina                   3                   27                        0                              0

11-2           Houston                  5                    39                       0                               1 (rushing)

Thus, in 8 games Owens has given the Bills 23 receptions for 281 yards, 3 plays of 25 or more yards and i TD catch along with 1 TD run. Thus, he projects for this season to finish with 46 catches, 562 yards, 6 plays of 25 or more yards and 2 TD catches. I'm guessing that Patrick Crayton exceeds those totals as the Dallas number three wideout this year. But, back to T. O. Adding his Buffalo numbers to the last 20 games he played with Dallas gives you this picture of the last 28 games----a year and three-quarters in NFL terms.

In those 28 games: 28 games---106 catches---1488 yards---14 plays of 25 yards of more---9 TD receptions.  During that stretch this certain future Hall of Famer had one monster games against San Francisco last year when the Niners had just fired their head coach and give  control to coach Mike Singletary. Owens burned that re-organizing 49ers defense for 7 catchesfor 213 yards and three TDs.

If you factor out that one big game, in his other 27 most recent games Owens has 99 catches for 1275 yards and 6 TDs. That would be a per game average of 3.6 catches a game for 47 yards and a TD every 18 quarters!

Hey, forget whatever Owens did or didn't do in the locker room. Forget whether some of his complaints were or were not valid. Look simply at the numbers and you get the picture of a pl;ayer who'd not even a solid #2 receiver any more. For whatever reasons Jerry ultimately had for releasing T. O.----he did the right thing!