Donovan McNabb has not said a whole lot about Terrell Owens in recent years even as Owens has taken numerous shots at McNabb, but the retired quarterback broke his silence in a big way this week.
McNabb was a guest on the latest installment of “Untold Stories” with Bleacher Report’s Master Tesfatsion, and the six-time Pro Bowler spoke about how optimistic he was after the Philadelphia Eagles lost to the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl back in 2005. McNabb said he felt the Eagles had all the pieces in place at that point to contend for a championship the next year, but he believes the drama between Owens and the team over the star receiver’s contract “broke us up.”
You can hear McNabb’s thoughts at around the 2:55 mark below:
Untold Stories with Donovan McNabb@donovanjmcnabb shares what it meant to be the 3rd black QB to start in the Super Bowl.
He thought the Eagles would be back after losing to the Patriots, but @terrellowens “Days Of Our Lives” saga “kinda broke us up.”pic.twitter.com/yEFOAEOb6a
— Master (@MasterTes) January 22, 2020
“The offseason goes through and then all of a sudden there’s turmoil there and (Owens and the Eagles) are in conversation going back and forth, and we had to answer those questions instead of focusing on what we need to do in order to get back to where we were,” McNabb said. “I thought that was a major distraction for us … That was something that kind of broke us up.”
What McNabb is referring to, of course, is the infamous 2005 offseason when Owens was seeking a new contract from the Eagles. He stayed away from training camp and held private workouts at his home in front of the media, including banging out sit-ups in his driveway and ordering pizza for the reporters in attendance. That season was then filled with turmoil, with TO being suspended by the team after making derogatory remarks about McNabb. Owens was released prior to the 2006 season and signed with the Dallas Cowboys.
McNabb was also asked if he is on speaking terms with Owens nearly 15 years later, and the quarterback said he’d simply “give a nice peace sign and keep it moving” if he were to encounter TO. McNabb said he prefers to leave the past in the past despite Owens making comments about McNabb more recently.
Owens has bashed McNabb off and on for years. He said back in 2014 that McNabb was jealous of the way Owens was embraced by the people of Philly, and Owens has also taken several shots at McNabb on Twitter.
We’ll never know what would have become of the Eagles if Owens simply showed up and did his job the year after they lost the Super Bowl, but the same could be said for a lot of franchises. That is simply how it goes sometimes with star players in the NFL.
