Is T.O. Actually Getting Worse?

This is meant as a benign question, as Terrell Owens will not play a down for the Dallas Cowboys in 2009: Has he gotten even more toxic?

 

Mike Florio of Profootballtalk.com said flatly in a post a day ago, "Buffalo, you are creating a monster."

 

Florio alludes to the warm welcome Owens has gotten in Buffalo, and the comments Owens made about Roger Goodell over the weekend, comments which, I would argue, were more incendiary than anything he ever said (at least publicly) in Dallas.

 

"The commissioner needs to go sit in jail for 23 months," Owens said to ESPN last week. The remarks came during a long treatise defending Michael Vick.

 

"The borderline bizarre adulation that the folks in Buffalo are heaping on Owens," Florio continues, "won't come without a price."

 

This price won't be paid via ticket sales, for sure, and probably not in production at the wide receiver position; rather, it will be paid throughout the season when Owens will, ineluctably, run into trouble--with teammates, the commish, whoever.

 

What's worse--as Florio hints--is that it's becoming more and more clear that Owens cares even less than in the past.