© Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports
On Sunday, Terrell Owens will be inducted into the San Francisco 49ers’ Hall of Fame. He’s well respected by 49ers general manager John Lynch, but Owens, as you may remember, had a knack for getting under his opponents’ skins. Lynch, who joined the Tolbert, Krueger and Brooks show on KNBR on Thursday, recalled a time when he tried to commit a felony against Owens and his wife, Linda, had to restrain him.
T.O. and I have a great relationship now. It wasn’t always that way. I remember one year in 2003, we came out here and we had just won the Super Bowl. We got absolutely obliterated by the Niners. Early in that game, he catches a little shallow cross, I come up and tackle him and I get up to one of the worst things that’s ever happened to me on the football field. T.O. had that big elbow in my Adam’s apple and darn near crushed the thing. The rest of the game, I tried to kill T.O. I mean, I literally lost my mind because I felt like a guy tried to end my life on the football field.
That year at the Pro Bowl, I’m sitting by the pool and the thing came to a head and my wife is holding me back. The year before, we played them in the playoffs in Tampa and he said, ‘You did something to my boy G Hearst!’ I said, ‘Well why didn’t you talk to me? Why didn’t you say something, man, instead of trying to kill me?’ And we ended up having a good laugh and we’ve been buddies ever since.’
Man, what a player. I didn’t always like him, but I certainly always respected him. What a career that he had. I don’t know if I’ve ever had as much respect for a player as when that Super Bowl with Philly, when he came off the broken leg with the Patriots, I don’t know, five weeks later and put on a clinic in that game and darn near won the game for them.
To listen to Lynch’s full interview on KNBR, click below:
