The Seattle Seahawks have some high hopes for 38-year old receiver Terrell Owens, and team GM John Schneider spoke at lenght about him on KJR in Seattle with Mitch Levy.
Schneider spoke about signing Terrell Owens, what his signing says about Sidney Rice, and how T.O. is going to fit into the team as a whole.
Make the jump to see for yourself.
On signing Terrell Owens:
"We're trying to run the most competitive atmosphere that we can here. I think we said when we got here we were going to turn over every leaf and check it out. We checked out Antonio Bryant and that didn't work out. We went down the road with Mike Williams and he wasn't able to continue at the pace that he was. We were looking for more of a power player if you will and so we heard a lot about Terrell and how he had been working out, we had done a lot of research with the last couple of clubs he was with so we brought him in and he had a heck of a workout so we decided to go ahead and if he was going to do things on our terms then we were more than happy to take a look here."
T.O. will certainly pick up the intensity and competitive pace with all his teammates in training camp, because that's just how T.O. works. Not to mention his likely knowledge that this is the end of the line for his NFL career, he can't afford to make mistakes.
How important T.O's workout was:
"In listening to everybody talk about how he takes care of himself and everything, here is a 38-year-old man that came in weighed 220 pounds and ran 4.45/4.43 and once he did that, I didn't see that coming because a lot of people talk about how fast they are and they have been taking care of themselves at this time of the year and everything, but this was true. You could see the guys' passion, you could see his intensity, his work ethic and that obviously rang through in that workout. He ran really well, dropped his hips really well, worked his way back to the ball, didn't drop a ball and was really quite impressive."
If anything T.O. has proven he's still physically able to run routes and is strong enough to compete at the NFL level. The question will be how his body will hold up over the course of a season, especially when it comes to taking hits day-in and day-out.
If this speaks to how concerned the team is about Sidney Rice's health:
"No. I thought for a guy that was going to have an operation on both of shoulders, I thought he was going to go pretty far into the preseason. I didn't know how far but he repaired both of his shoulders so I wasn't sure how quickly he'd be back. Coaches are always going to want players back as quick as they can and then personnel guys are going to say ‘let's just take care of the guy and let's make sure he's completely healthy before we put him out there.' Now at some point we all recognize that he's going to have to go out there and get banged around a little bit and be able to react appropriately to his surgeries and his rehab and everything so at some point we need to find that out but we're not just going to do it to put him out there. He's doing a nice job, he's rehabbing and he's doing everything the way we like to see him do it. In regards to the other players I totally agree and I've had discussions with several of them and this is not an indictment on what they're doing. We have some young guys we are very excited about. If anything we think this guy, with his work ethic, anybody you talk to on his other teams, whether it be Buffalo or Dallas, Cincinnati or Philly, they all talk about him being the hardest worker out there. If anything it will be positive for these guys knowing that they have to step their game up as well and obviously they look up to this guy. He's a 38-year-old man that has accomplished a lot in this league and a lot of them were in there watching the workout yesterday and all of them were very impressed like the majority of us were."
What T.O's role will be with the Seahawks
"I think it's a process that is going to take place. We felt it was early enough in training camp to do something like this. If you do something like this where you're in more like a panic mode, like the third preseason game then maybe it doesn't make sense because who knows if you have enough time to really figure out how he's going to fit in and where he's at physically. I think this gives us enough time to figure that out. From an expectation standpoint, you were saying earlier that you have a lot of people that are very excited about it and some people that aren't excited about it, I think with us, in all of our acquisitions, we're pretty much right down the middle of the road. We have to be even-keeled about everything and not get too far off kilter because that's when you start getting in trouble is when you start reacting too much to what may or may not be."
I hope Owens can be a productive part of this Seahawks squad, and keep himself clear of off the field distractions and hogging the spotlight. I think that time is past him though.
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