Faceoff - WR Terrell Owens, Buffalo Bills

Posted 7/20, exclusive to Footballguys.com

Upside - by Andy Hicks

Terrell Owens will turn 36 before the season finishes, moves to his fourth club in the last seven years, and has a reputation as one of the NFL's most difficult players. That doesn't matter when it comes to your fantasy squad. He'll play, he'll dominate, and he'll be a WR1 for your team. The good news is that you don't need to draft him at the usual price. His current average draft position reflects the wariness of other owners after another turbulent off season.

Yes Terrell Owens is a coach's nightmare; yes he screams; yes he shouts and he deserves his reputation as a prima donna, but this is irrelevant when it comes to your fantasy squad. While Dick Jauron and Trent Edwards will nervously wait for the first eruption from Owens, he has been a No. 1 fantasy WR every year this decade except 2005 when he only played the first seven games of the season in his final year with the Eagles (and scored 763 yards and six touchdowns in those seven games). In fact the only other years he has finished outside the Top 4 fantasy receivers are 2003 when he finished 12th in his final year with the 49ers and 2008 when he finished ninth in his final year with the Cowboys. Notice the trend? Final year with a club = not so good, every other year = Top 4 and predominantly Top 3. Of course in signing a one-year contract with Buffalo it could also be his final year with the Bills as well, but he was very productive in his first year with both the Cowboys and the Eagles.

Of course Owens will be a risky draft pick - anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves. However, for a guy who averages 12 touchdowns a year, behind only Randy Moss and Art Powell in the career touchdowns to games ratio (yes, Owens is ahead of even Jerry Rice), the odds of Owens exceeding his draft slot are very good. A lot of the concern surrounding Owens will revolve around his quarterback, Trent Edwards. Edwards will be in his third year and has made solid progression in each of his first two seasons. With a solid running game and the presence of Owens and Lee Evans, Edwards won't have to be Peyton Manning to keep the offense moving along.

A motivated Terrell Owens is generally a productive Terrell Owens and with a 1 year contract he'll be out to prove a point to those who doubt he can still be a dominant force in the NFL. Owens has 10-touchdown seasons in his bad years, so anything less would be a surprise in 2009. With a young improving quarterback and a team with realistic playoff ambitions, don't be surprised to see Terrell Owens back into the upper echelon of fantasy receivers again. At the very least he will be a WR1, easily exceeding his current draft slot. Value won't come better than Terrell Owens in 2009.

Downside - by Sigmund Bloom

Terrell Owens profile in fantasy leagues has dropped from its normal lofty perch. Although he finished among the top 10 wide receivers last year (ninth), his current ADP is WR12 (31st overall). A closer examination of how he performed in 2008 and we should expect in 2009 reveals that his real value is even lower than that ADP, which means you should let him become someone else's problem.

Any Dallas fan can tell you TO didn't have the same game-changing effect that we've become accustomed to in 2008. Defensive game plans that focused on him were actually successful at taking him out of the game. TO often couldn't get open and ended up frustrated - which could have been part of the reason TO was given his walking papers this year. TO's finish as the No. 9 wide receiver conceals the drag he had on fantasy teams. In six of the 15 fantasy games that actually matter, Owens was held under 40 yards receiving (and maxed out at five receptions in those games to hurt PPR leaguers just the same). Forty percent of the time a fantasy No. 1 receiver had about the same numbers as a waiver wire tight end! You can't blame it on Brad Johnson, either. Four of the six games that Owens laid an egg came with Tony Romo at the helm, which brings us to the second part of the argument to avoid Owens this year.

Well, at least when Owens wasn't putting up paltry totals, he was putting up studly sums, right? He caught ten TD passes and reached double digit fantasy points half the time in non-PPR leagues, which is no small feat. The problem is that most of them came from Romo, and this year he'll be catching passes from Trent Edwards, who threw one more TD pass in 2008 than Owens caught. The Bills say they are installing some no huddle looks to open up the passing offense, but Edwards has clearly been operating as a "don't lose the game" game manager so far in his career (just about the opposite of Romo). It will take more than an offseason for Edwards to become aggressive enough to light up the stat sheet, even if he is throwing to Owens and Lee Evans.

The last warning sign about Owens was how his brief stint went down in free agency. He signed a one-year deal very quickly even though his agent is Drew Rosenhaus. This means Rosenhaus, Owens, the Bills, and the rest of the league all know that Owens time as a No. 1 wideout is coming to a close. Third-round picks are spent on players in their prime that give you strong scores at their position week in, week out, and Terrell Owens no longer satisfies any part of that description.