Terrell Owens blew up Eagles training camp 20 years ago. Here are the relevant lessons from that chaos.

Two Lombardi Trophies in the last decade suggest Jeffrey Lurie and the Eagles have learned plenty from the Owens-Donovan McNabb fiasco.

In this file photo, former Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens, banished from training camp for insubordination in 2005, does sit-ups at his home in Moorestown, N.J., for the assembled media.Read moreFILE PHOTO

by Mike Sielski | Columnist

Published July 21, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

It seems, in so many ways and for some very specific reasons, so long ago now. And it was a long time ago, almost 20 years, that Terrell Owens transformed the Eagles’ 2005 training camp at Lehigh University into a spectacle of strangeness unlike anything in Philadelphia’s often-weird sports history.

The contract dispute. The argument between Owens and Andy Reid that led Reid to throw him out of practice. The news helicopters tracking Owens. The situps that he did in the driveway of his Moorestown home, with media and members of the public surrounding him. The interview he did on ESPN, during which he tore Donovan McNabb to pieces. All of it coming months after the Eagles had reached the Super Bowl for the first time in 24 years and had lost — by three points to the New England Patriots — in a game they could have won. There was tension. There was chaos. There were times that it felt appropriate to laugh. There were times that it felt like you were watching an NFL franchise fall apart.

The 2025 Eagles begin camp this week as the league’s defending champions and, relatively speaking, with no controversy hovering over them at all. Who will be the starting right guard? Will the edge rushers generate enough pressure on opposing quarterbacks? How much will the doubters and haters fuel Jalen Hurts? These questions and possible problems are not actually problems when you compare them to say, the star wide receiver implying that the star quarterback is an Uncle Tom. Like I said, tension and chaos.

The Owens fiasco should have been instructive for the Eagles, for chairman Jeffrey Lurie in particular. They should have learned from it. Their success over the last several years — the two Super Bowl victories, the three Super Bowl appearances, the status as one of the NFL’s most respected organizations — suggests they have. Consider, for instance, these three valuable lessons from the L’affaire du T.O.

1. Don’t be afraid to make a bold move, and don’t be afraid to admit a big mistake.

When the Eagles, in March 2004, pulled off the three-team trade that landed them Owens, they broke from their philosophy that a team didn’t necessarily need an elite wide receiver to win a Super Bowl. They also showed that by acquiring Owens, who over his first eight years in the league had built a reputation as a troublemaker, they were willing to take a major risk. That risk almost paid off. Owens had a brilliant regular season in ’04: 77 catches, 1,200 yards, and 14 touchdowns in just 14 games. Then, after breaking his leg and tearing a ligament in his ankle, he returned for Super Bowl XXXIX, caught nine passes for 122 yards, and was the best player on the field.

But once Owens and agent Drew Rosenhaus made it clear not only that Owens wanted to renegotiate his contract but that he would be disruptive in the name of getting his money, the Eagles had an obvious choice to make. They could pay him, or they could get rid of him. They did neither, and he blew up the season.

Look at how the Eagles handle such delicate situations now. In 2021, it didn’t matter that they had just handed Carson Wentz a huge contract extension or that Doug Pederson had won a Super Bowl three years earlier. Just this year, it didn’t matter that Bryce Huff had been their highest-priced free-agent signee of the previous offseason. Better to pay a hefty price and move on than to fall victim to the sunk-cost fallacy.

2. Not every player needs to be treated exactly the same way.

Owens had signed a team-friendly deal just after joining the Eagles: a seven-year contract with that was worth as much as $49 million. After his terrific ’04 season and especially his gutsy performance in the Super Bowl, he and Rosenhaus argued that he had outperformed that contract. The Eagles insisted that they didn’t want to set that kind of precedent. Suppose another player on the roster tried to renegotiate his deal? Wasn’t a contract supposed to be binding?

This was a dubious counterargument for two reasons. One, NFL teams, the Eagles included, have never had much compunction about reworking players’ (non-guaranteed) contracts to benefit themselves. Two, it was easy and understandable for Owens to tell the Eagles, Hey, if a defensive end makes nine tackles and picks up two sacks in a Super Bowl while playing on a broken leg, then we can talk about precedent. Until then, pay me. I earned it.

Maybe giving Owens a new contract wouldn’t have placated him. Maybe nothing would have. But it would have been a better course of action than doing nothing, which is what the Eagles did. Now they do their best to snuff out any disgruntlement before it starts to fester. Saquon Barkley, for instance, got an extra two years and $36 million in guaranteed money in March. Barkley, of course, is hardly the locker-room cancer that Owens was, but why take the chance that the best player on your team isn’t happy?

3. Talent matters, but striking the right balance between talent and character matters more.

It took all of 30 seconds into Owens’ first Lehigh practice for everyone who had been covering the Eagles during the Reid era to say to themselves, So THIS is what an elite wide receiver looks like. He was that good, that much better than anyone else who had come before him or who was still on the roster, and it’s no coincidence that McNabb had the best season of his career when the Eagles’ offense was stacked with Owens, Brian Westbrook, two solid tight ends in Chad Lewis and L.J. Smith, and an excellent offensive line.

All that talent, though, was no match for Owens’ destructive tendencies. He split the locker room into factions, and nobody could make it whole again. The 2024-25 Eagles had an overwhelming amount of talent on both sides of the ball, yes. But an underrated aspect of their Super Bowl run was that — even after the “passing” controversy involving Hurts, A.J. Brown, and DeVonta Smith — they never allowed that kind of dissension to develop and derail the season.