Eagles Today

Donovan McNabb: Terrell Owens distracted Eagles from Super Bowl return

Former Eagles QB said Owens' holdout did not allow the team to focus on getting back to the Big Game following 2005's loss to the Patriots; Owens later responded on Twitter

Ed Kracz

USA Today

Donovan McNabb blames receiver Terrell Owens for the Eagles not returning to the Super Bowl a year after they lost SB XXXIX against the New England Patriots in 2005.

Owens helped the Eagles make it to Jacksonville for the Big Game following a 13-3 regular season in 2004, but he wanted a new contract and refused to report to training camp the following season. He created quite a commotion, too, in his quest to land a new deal, staying at his New Jersey home and publicly working out in his driveway.

“I thought that was the major distraction for us,” said McNabb when he went on Bleacher Report’s Untold Stories recently. “He’s doing sit-ups, he’s doing pushups, he’s playing basketball, he’s ordering pizza for people out there, we’re sitting at training camp like, 'you gotta be kidding me.'”

The Eagles held training camp at Lehigh University when Andy Reid was the head coach from 1999-2012 and McNabb remembers sitting in his dorm room in the summer of 2005 with teammates Brian Dawkins and Jeremiah Trotter watching Owens’ antics on television.

“Dawkins comes in and was like, ‘Man what’s he doing now?’ said McNabb. “I’m like, ‘Take a look.’ This is like Days of Our Lives. It was unbelievable.

"That was something that kind of broke us up. That was what was most frustrating for me because I knew what we could do and if we decided to just come together what we would be able to accomplish.”

Here is Owens' response on Twitter:

Owens made 77 catches for 1,200 yards and 14 touchdowns in 14 games during that 2004 season that led to the Super Bowl.

He missed the final two games when he suffered a broken leg and tore a ligament in his right ankle. The injury required surgery, but Owens sped up his recovery timetable by sitting in a hyperbaric chamber and returned for the Super Bowl.

Owens excelled in the game, playing 62 of the Eagles’ 72 offensive snaps against the Patriots. Owens was targeted 14 times, catching nine passes for 122 yards.

It wasn’t enough, as the Eagles fell 24-21.

McNabb returned to the field as the Patriots celebrated in Jacksonville.

“We had been this close so many times that we would be back,” said McNabb. “I had confidence that the guys in locker room would do what we had to do to get back to this point to redeem ourselves. I just felt this is going to happen.”

The Eagles had brought Owens, defensive end Jevon “The Freak” Kearse, and running back Dorsey Levens in during the 2004 offseason to fortify a team that had been to three straight NFC Championship Games without being able to get over the hump and into the Super Bowl.

“We felt we were invincible that (2004) year,” said McNabb.

“The lead into the following year, he (Owens) will be back healthy, we have Freak, we have guys that were just elevating their game, gaining experience, we’re going to be back.”

Then came the Owens distraction.

“All of a sudden turmoil here and there, conversations going back and forth, and we had to answer those questions instead of focusing on what we needed to do in order to get back to where we were,” said McNabb.

McNabb and Owens haven’t seen eye-to-eye since, and they continue to have a contentious relationship.

“I give a nice peace sign and keep it moving,” said McNabb. “I respect his time I love my time. There’s no need for me to try to dust off anything that happened in the past, because what’s in past is in past. He made a few comments as of late, that’s cool with me. I’m a grown man, I have grown-man business.”

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Ed Kracz
ED KRACZ

Ed Kracz has been covering the Eagles full-time for over a decade and has written about Philadelphia sports since 1996. He wrote about the Phillies in the 2008 and 2009 World Series, the Flyers in their 2010 Stanely Cup playoff run to the finals, and was in Minnesota when the Eagles secured their first-ever Super Bowl win in 2017. Ed has received multiple writing awards as a sports journalist, including several top-five finishes in the Associated Press Sports Editors awards.

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