These are strange times for Chad Ochocinco. He’s reached the Super Bowl for the first time, but he’s not even sure he’ll be active for the game.
He’s experiencing his greatest team success at a time when he’s struggling individually. And that’s putting it nicely.
“No, there’s no bittersweetness,” Ochocinco told Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald Friday. “There’s a competitive side to me that is angry, the competitive nature in me that it didn’t go the way it normally has. I routinely produce a certain way every year.
“So when that routine goes astray like it did this year, it feels funny. It’s something I had to get used to. But I took it in stride. I did everything I was asked on and off the field.”
Ochocinco has only spoken to the New England media a handful of times all season. He’s spoken a lot more to Terrell Owens and Randy Moss throughout the year.
“For me, those guys were my outlets. Not Twitter,” Ochocinco said. “To have those two guys in my corner, I talk to them all the time. (Moss) keeps me sane for 16 weeks, every week. Every week we talked. T.O., too. We’re close-knit, us so-called diva receivers. . . . I love those two, man. I didn’t want to burden anyone else in here with that bull. They don’t want to hear that.”
He also compared playing in a new offense to marriage.
“It’s like being married. If I’m married to Halle Berry for 10 years, and her and I break up, and I marry Scarlett Johansson, there are going to be some things I have to adjust to based off what I’m used to. That’s just the way life is in general.”
The Patriots will likely ask for a divorce after this year. Still, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Ochocinco active for the Super Bowl. He confirmed that he was inactive for the AFC title game because he was late getting back for a team meeting after going to his father’s funeral. He accepts the way Bill Belichick does things.
“Do you remember ‘Full Metal Jacket?’ Remember at the beginning of the movie? That’s Bill. Everything has to be perfect, precise, detailed . . . and I love it,” Ochocinco said laughing. “That’s why we are where we are.”