Maybe Bengals receiver Terrell Owens is smarter than the rest of us. By criticizing former Eagles teammate Donovan McNabb’s performance on Monday Night Football, T.O. managed to take the steam out of the criticism of his own performance from the day before.
But enough criticism emerged to bother him, primarily since any criticism bothers him.
We pointed out a pair of particularly problematic plays from the 23-17 loss to the Colts on Monday, and Dan Dierdorf of CBS called T.O.'s half-hearted effort to get back to the line of scrimmage while the clock was ticking late in a still-winnable game “pathetic.”
Owens doesn’t want to hear it.
“People that say I have a lack of effort, they can go pound sand,” Owens said earlier this week, per Kevin Goheen of the Cincinnati Enquirer. “There’s nothing that’s been a lack of effort on my part. For someone to say that, then they don’t know me very well. I take offense to it because that’s not how I play.”
That said, Owens admitted after the game that an interception by Colts safety Aaron Francisco resulted from Owens failing to come out of his break at “full speed.”
(Maybe that was actually said by T.O.'s brother.)
Regardless, the video tells the story, and the story is that T.O. at times didn’t give full effort, even though he’s giving more than full effort to conceal that reality.