Terrell Owens has been saying for years that he could still play in the NFL, and as it turns out, he might be right. Although T.O. hasn’t played in an NFL game in nearly a decade, he apparently still has NFL speed and he showed that off this week during a 40-yard race against Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill that ended up being surprisingly close.
In most cases, when you have one of the fastest players in the NFL racing against a 46-year-old, it’s not going to be close and the 46-year-old will likely have a heart attack, but this isn’t most cases.
Hill and Owens were working out together recently when they decided to hold two races. The first race covered 100 yards and it seemed to serve as a test race so that Hill could gauge just how fast Owens is. In the 100-yard race, Hill gave Owens a 10-yard head start, which proved to be too much, because T.O. ended up hanging on for the win (You can watch that race by clicking here).
In the second race, the two speedsters changed the distance to 40 yards and that’s when things got interesting.
Um what. Owens winning would have been the shocker of the century, but the fact that he kept it that close was also pretty surprising.
In the video, you can hear Hill’s trainer say that Tyreek ran a 4.37 while T.O ran a 4.40 to 4.42. Owens didn’t win the race, but running that kind of time at age 46 is absolutely bonkers. Most 46 year olds would probably tear both their hamstrings trying to race Hill, but not only did Owens pull it off, he kept it close (By the way, the race was hand-timed, so it’s completely possible that final times weren’t completely accurate. However, even if you had one-tenth of a second to Owens’ time, 4.5 to 4.52 is still insanely impressive).
Owens was so fast that Hill actually complimented the Hall of Famer on Twitter.
Owens last played in an NFL regular season game back in 2010 when he was with the Bengals, and ever since that last game, he’s been insisting that he could still play. As recently as 2017, Owens said it was a joke that no one was willing to sign him.
“Me not being on the field right now is a joke, and I don’t care what people say,” Owens said at the time.
As it turns out, he might have had a point.
The former 49ers, Cowboys, Eagles, Bengals and Bills receiver was named a first-team All-Pro a total of five times during his Hall of Fame career, which spanned from 1996 to 2010.