Glad somebody came out and said it. This is a mild-mannered-football-playing team. Guys like Romo and Barber and Witten and Cricket and Bigg just go out and do their jobs. They don’t need to be loud because they are all growing together as a team.
I’m sure T.O. is a nice and fun guy to be around; but, I honestly think his fire is a bit too intrusive when guys are trying to focus on doing their own jobs and learning from mistakes. The offense won’t be perfect. We can hope it will be consistent and productive.

Second!

At least they are giving him every opportunity and want him to. He said don’t expect rookie third round pick (Williams) to be able to come in, learn this defense and replace Burnett….. They so far have really like what they seen from Carpenter…..

Keep on hating…haters!…….. :)

Go ahead Terry……disagree with your boy Mickey…..

It wasn’t the “distraction” or even high school cat fight scenario of Witten vs TO, Romo vs TO, Garrett vs TO… Their decision appears to be based on needing to set a particular tone in the locker room.

It’s been a classic mistake for media guys to call for “leadership” in the locker room. “Leadership” is not inherently “good” – think James Jones and Manson. TO is charasmatic and productive but his selfishness and insecurity made it nearly impossible for him to fill the role of Irvin – positive, supportive, encouraging. TO’s natural but less-than-positive leadership left little room for everyone from Witten, Romo and even Garrett to exert the influence they needed, and the criticism of the OC, QB and TE in that respect had to be the last straw – if parts of the team are being convinced that the OC and QB are incompetent, the whole offense will stop functioning as a unit.

The fact that TO was possibly on the a slight downward slide physically made it easier, but I think they needed first and foremost to get everyone in the boat rowing to the same cadence.

The circus follows him wherever he goes, whether he deserves it or not. It wasn’t so much T.O. who had to go, but the the Cowboys had to get rid of the circus. The only way to make the circus go away was to get rid of T.O.

I can understand and live with that. It’s unfortunate, but it was necessary.

All started with good relationships, all ended with negative relationships. Different franchises, different coaches, different times.

One common thread, TO.

was the player who usually sat in corner with Bobby Johnson, whose pregame meals were twinkies and honey buns, and who thought about taking leadership pills while the rest of the players trained hard with TO. I guess the player wasn’t self-motivated to be an influence in the locker room. That player’s sad face in the locker room must have broke Jerry’s and Stephen’s heart. So much drama indeed.

To me, it was simple, T.O. became too powerful of a figure on the team and his personality was too overbearing, it’s been that way on every team he’s played on and therefore no surprise he’s never been on a championship team.

Bottom line is that T.O. usurped the leadership role from Romo, thus he had to be released, no brainer.

“If this is the worst thing that ever happens to me," the player said, "then I’ll have lived a pretty good life.”

Maybe the guys who thought the world of TO were looking for someone who wants to win. Tears must have came to the players eyes upon seeing the other players look up to TO and not him.

consisted of him recruiting other players to complain about/to the OC. It’s insidious and designed to undermine. He ‘mentored’ younger player so they would support him in his inevitable ’they’re against me’ posturing. It’s called ‘The Empowerment of Victimization,’ and is used to justify your own bad behavior because you are supposedly responding to mistreatment.

I went through this with Prime Time, when I was against his signing. As fellow DC fanatic told me, ‘he may be an a$$, but he’s our a$$ now.’ That’s exactly the approach I took with TO. Years 1 and 2 were unexpectedly good – little destructive behaviors, some drama, but I discounted it because the production was off the charts. This past year, I argued repeatedly, we needed to replace the production and couldn’t stand the salary cap hit. Well, the people that own/run the team thought differently.

There’s no doubt in my mind TO held the offense – OC and QB especially, hostage last year. Look no further than the 1st WAS game for confirmation. Even after getting the ball forced to him, to the detriment of the team, he complained even more.

No player, no matter how talented, is above the team. They are means to the end. TO’s inability to sublimate his desire for personal achievement, sudden inability to get of LOS jams, frequent drops made the juice not worth the squeeze.

He’s not our problem anymore, so I really don’t care that much about his present or future. I do think we will now be a better team. Better results ? Only time will tell…

Happy Father’s Day, Cowboys fans!!!

indeed there are worst things that can happen. For example, there could be a nuclear holocaust. Or what if an asteroid hits the earth? Or what if a black hole suddenly appears and swallows the earth, vaporizing us into atoms? The black hole scenario was farfetched, but the asteroid scenario wasn’t (just ask that kid in Germany who was hit by one last week. There are worse things that could have happened to him as well: what if it hit his head?). Whenever something bad happens to me, when I don’t meet expectations, when I disappoint others, I will look back on the player’s words of wisdom and think it could be worst if an asteroid hit the earth.

107 comments in a night is a lot for this time of year. I like your insinuations about Stephen Jones assuming more command, but when he’s owner, I will miss JJ’s flair for the dramatic.

About our Oline, while I realize if Flozel went down, we’d replace only the LT, would it make some sense to instead slide Marc Colombo over to LT, and give Brewster a shot at RT if Flozel were gamed for a while?

Drew Pearson had an interview on GAC a couple weeks ago where he gives some really good insights from a WR perspective into why T.O. was a bad influence on the developing receivers:

When I look at the receiver corps, I don’t see much growth there, and I think that growth was stunted because of Terrell Owens’ presence. And the way he did thinks, they were successful, they might have been okay because they made him successful, but they maybe were not the right way to get things done as far as teaching and young guys learning and emulating you as a wide receiver. You know, he didn’t follow things by the book, there’s a lot of things I could see him doing—I’m talking about Owens—releases off the line, in and out of his breaks, his pass routes, the sharpness wasn’t there, the backside routes, when the ball was supposed to be going somewhere else, was he really hustling on the back side, no.

So all these kinds of things, you have a tendency if you’re a receiver playing behind somebody like that, you’re going to start doing those same things, because first of all he’s successful in getting away with it, and second of all the coaches aren’t going to correct him very often, so they’re going to let him get away with some of those things, and that to me presents a negative influence as far as the growth of those young receivers that they have, and to me, they haven’t really progressed enough for us to be really considering and counting on them to be a big part of the offense this year.

(h/t DC Fanatic)

The Best thing about the article is the continued ascendance of Stephen Jones.

1) To all of the Terrell Owens fans: I don’t hate TO, I don’t think that it was ALL his fault at all, but come on. It kills me that there is almost complete denial that he could be a distraction. Am I the only guy who remembered him doing situps in his driveway? It hasn’t ever been about people liking him, he’s a likable dude, but the same people who will get on here and get onto Romo for that speech after the Philly game, TOTALLY just forget about a receiver that WON the Washington game and then still bitched to the media about getting involved.

That’s the leader we got rid of, really? The same guy who BTW is on his fourth team in the NFL. A regular Ray Lewis right there.

2) YM, Tex, Sharksbreath: Who are you going to go out and replace Romo with? Do you have 1-800-DialAQB on your phone?

Instead of totally wanting a new QB, just hope that cuts down on his mental errors. The dude has said some stuff I think was stupid, and he makes some untimely errors sometimes, but no one on here can convince me that we would better off with Jon Kitna at the helm or some free agent QB. Then you take the risk of drafting QB’s every year. For those who throw out “Matt Ryan!” I can throw out Alex Smith! Jamarcus Russell!

And if you don’t hit on them, then you’re doing the same thing 3 or 4 years down the line.

Romo isn’t the best QB, but he’s a damned good one.