Monday, July 24, 2006

T.O.'s days as a headache are finished

Richard Oliver: Owens' days as headache are finished

Web Posted: 07/23/2006 12:00 AM CDT


San Antonio Express-News

Surely Bill Parcells and Terrell Owens will clash, sooner than later.

When it happens, it will be the stuff of Stephen King narrative, an explosion of combustible personalities that splatters onlookers with the shrapnel of vented spleen, spewed bile and spilled guts.

The Tuna will be hot. T.O. will be terrible.

The locker room will fracture into divisions of support, the fissure tearing right through team unity. The ramifications will be felt in headlines, game plans and the standings.

A season will be lost.

photo
(Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press)

New Cowboys receiver Terrell Owens may help energize the team.
More coverage

* Cowboys' blocking will decide their fate
* More NFL coverage

The seeming inevitability of turmoil provides the most compelling backdrop to the start of Cowboys training camp this week in California. Whether Parcells, the irascible old coach, can coexist with receiver Owens, the cancerous malcontent, has Dallas fans feeling tighter than Flozell Adams' waistband these days.

However, before you plunk down that Benjamin on WagerWeb.com, gambling that the relationship between Parcells and Owens will soon be stretched thinner than Jerry Jones' brow, consider this.

Don't bet on it.

History dictates otherwise, and the weeks to come likely will showcase again that there isn't an NFL coach better suited to deal with inflammatory personalities. Parcells has made a Hall of Fame career out of managing the manic, with Owens simply the latest challenge.

The wideout will learn soon enough, if he hasn't already, what flawed characters such as Bryan Cox, Lawrence Taylor and Keyshawn Johnson learned in toiling under Parcells in previous campaigns.

The pressure is off.

Because you're not in charge.

In retrospect, Owens' disastrous stays in San Francisco and Philadelphia were characterized by the failure of coaches Steve Mariucci — too vanilla — and Andy Reid — too permissive — to effectively manage an athlete as complex and talented as any in the league. Both allowed the scheming player enough wiggle room to exact his own will, at least initially, and the result was damaging.

Beginning this week, when Owens steps off his book tour and onto the field, he'll find a different landscape. No longer a savior, as anointed in Philly, instead he'll be an apostle, like it or not.

Already, Parcells has passed along the message, noting in his first comments on Owens a few weeks back that the wideout probably won't be enjoying a 100-catch season in Chris Palmer's offense. The inference was clear.

In Dallas, the savior is the guy wearing the headset.

But in that, the coach has been a blessing for the agitators under his watch. As the unquestioned face and voice of the franchise, a totalitarian ruler who gags his assistants and reins in players' availability, Parcells routinely dictates the mood and pace of things.

Additionally, the Tuna has been manipulating the public and media since Owens' big mouth was working on a sippy cup. Parcells knows the game better than his players, and he also knows how to control it.

This isn't to say that we won't be treated to Owens' self-aggrandizement with some regularity. The old coach's resume also is threaded throughout with a tolerance for, and occasional celebration of, the bombastic athlete.

Parcells savors his dedicated warriors, and will accept the peripheral cost of that. When it comes to the clubhouse and the sideline, he doesn't necessarily commit to democracy, unless it refers to a balanced offensive attack.

He doesn't have to treat everyone the same, doesn't have to resort to niceties in passing along his instructions, doesn't have to answer to complaints. Certain players are invited to bray all they want off the field, as long as they play within the system on it.

Johnson, whose own mercurial career has mirrored Owens' on many levels, is a prime example. The tireless self-promoter did his job from kickoff to conclusion for Parcells, usually sweating for success, and as a result was able to yap all he wanted in the locker room, sucking the oxygen out of the place until everyone was lightheaded.

What he wouldn't do for Jon Gruden at Tampa Bay, he did for Parcells.

Owens will get his chances to do the same, and the results will be telling for Cowboys fans. If T.O. is talking, it likely will mean he's earned the chance to do so.

Of course, things might unfold far differently. Parcells may prove ineffective and Owens incorrigible.

A season might be lost.

But don't bet on it.