Drew and Drew

If T.O.'s agent Drew Rosenhaus makes you think of Jerry Maguire before Renee Zellweger and that goofy-looking kid showed up and taught him the value of love blah blah, your thoughts will be confirmed by ESPN.com's recent profile of Rosenhaus (click here). It's pretty much summed up in the opening paragraphs:

"MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – The gleaming Ferrari 360 Spider, a red soft top, sits on the wide brick driveway, flanked by a black Hummer H2 and a pair of Cadillac Escalades. Palm trees, ruffled by a steady breeze off the water, frame the opulent Key Biscayne home.

Inside, Drew Rosenhaus, wielding a pair of black and chrome Treo 650s – high-tech phones combining e-mail access, a digital camera and MP3 player – is handling two calls at the same time.

'Yeah, buddy, let me get right back to you," the NFL's most powerful agent said, rolling his eyes and switching to the other phone. "Sure, man, we'll do it next weekend in Atlanta. Yeah, I'll be there.'

He signs off and looks up from his cluttered mahogany desk.

'T.O.' he said simply."

Rosenhaus also appeared on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" yesterday and said there was a 50-50 chance of Owens showing up to training camp. He gave his usual arguments, as Bob Brookover reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer (here):

"If the Eagles will honor that contract, so will Terrell," Rosenhaus said. "What I mean by that is, if they said to me that they would pay that entire amount over the life of that contract, we'll guarantee it, then we'll honor it. The problem is, they don't have to. I have players every day like Hugh Douglas or Nate Webster who do five- and six-year deals and either they get hurt or they don't play as well and a year later, the team says forget about those last four or five years. They're underperforming.

"But in the case of a player like a Terrell Owens or a Javon Walker, where they overperform a contract, what is so negative about me coming in and saying, 'Hey, can we take a look at this?' "

Rosenhaus also brings up Webster in the ESPN.com profile, but unfortunately, Greg Garber doesn't ask him what I think are two important questions worth having the agent on the record about:

1) Webster received a $2.5 million signing bonus last year for his new deal and played three games. That's the risk the Bengals took in signing him away from the Bucs; shouldn't the possibility of being released be the risk Webster takes?

2) How much money do you earn from representing Terrell Owens if he doesn't get his contract renegotiated?

(BTW, Webster reworked his deal earlier this week so he won't be released. Part of the agreement is that his final three years of the old deal are voided. So he can get a new and potentially better deal if he stays healthy this season. Was that so hard, Drew?)

I'm not going to defend NFL owners, as they seem to have more of an upper hand with labor than other sports, especially mid-level veterans who have little leverage against teams relying on cheaper roster-filling rookies. But signing bonuses are a way to balance out the lack of guaranteed contracts. If Jevon Kearse suffered a career-ending injury last season, not entirely out of the question given his medical history, the Eagles would have been out $20 million with nothing to show. And T.O. did receive a nice little bonus last year after playing below expectations the previous season in San Francisco.

A final question that goes unasked is whether Rosenhaus thinks his public strategy with T.O. hurt more than it has helped. By attempting to paint Owens as a victim after he earned $10 million in the previous year, Rosenhaus turned most fans from this working-class city against the receiver, fans who gave him a hero's welcome, but also could never dream of earning $10 million in their whole working lives. Shutting up and playing with the same grit and flair this season as he did last season, Owens could have then called attention to a deal obviously designed to leave the Eagles an easy out after two years (most of Owens' 2006 salary is wrapped up in a $5 million roster bonus). If the Birds won the Super Bowl with Owens' help, how much harder would it be for the team to justify not keeping him on the team in 2006.

Instead, Rosenhaus chose to make a bid for renegotiation immediately. Why not tell his client to sit tight and wait for a stronger bargaining hand? Well, what if T.O. were to suffer a career-ending injury this season and be forced to retire? How much of nothing would be Rosenhaus' cut?