Cups of coffee: Jeff Owens' one NFL game ended in injury, stopped his career
The Eagles' seventh-round pick in 2010 played his only NFL game under bizarre circumstances on a Tuesday night.
Inspired by Pro Football Reference’s “Cups of Coffee” database, The Inquirer identified more than two dozen living players who appeared in just one NFL game — and played that game as an Eagle. We’re seeking to tell some of those stories in our semiregular Cups of Coffee series.
Former Eagles defensive tackle Jeff Owens played his first NFL game on Dec. 28, 2010. A gruesome knee injury made it his last.
“It looked that bad when you watched it,” Owens said.
His NFL debut came in Week 16 vs. the Minnesota Vikings, which was played on a Tuesday night at the Linc in bizarre circumstances. A snow emergency that had been forecast for the area meant the game was moved from Sunday Night Football, and it became the NFL’s first scheduled Tuesday contest since 1946.
The Vikings were 5-9 and playing out the string behind a quarterback, Joe Webb, who was a converted wide receiver.
The heavily favored Eagles were 10-4 and had already clinched the NFC East, but needed the win to stay in the hunt for a first-round playoff bye. They wouldn’t get it.
Owens, a seventh-round draft pick out of Georgia who had spent the season on the practice squad, was helping to fill in on the front seven for rookie Brandon Graham, who had torn his ACL and meniscus two weeks prior.
While the snow subsided, the temperatures remained frigid. Cold winters were somewhat foreign to Owens, who spent his childhood in the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., area and played college football in the SEC. Now 39, Owens thinks the weather played a massive role in his injury.
“I’m trying to warm up, get in the hot tub before the game and all that; we got the benches warm … and it’s a big difference when you’re trying to go full speed, 100 miles per hour in that kind of weather and stopping on a dime. My body just wasn’t used to it,” Owens said.
Late in the third quarter, Owens fell backward while trying to chase Webb out of the pocket. He remained down and immobile for minutes before being carted off the field. He was placed on injured reserve the next morning, with a ruptured left patellar tendon. The injury itself was devastating for Owens, but the injury’s timing made the situation worse.
“You don’t have surgery till January/February, and the expectation is you’re not going to be ready to play when training camp comes back,” Owens said. “Then when I came back … that first day, I didn’t pass my physical because I wasn’t ready.”
To add insult to literal injury, the Eagles lost the game, 24-14. They didn’t win again that season, falling to the Green Bay Packers 12 days later in what became the final playoff game of the Andy Reid era.
There was more working against Owens after the injury. An NFL lockout spanning from late March to late July 2011 prevented him from entering the team facility to rehab. Once it finally opened back up following the signing of the collective bargaining agreement, the Eagles didn’t have the patience to wait for Owens’ return and released him on the first day of training camp.
“Maybe if I was a third-rounder, second-rounder, I would’ve had more leeway, but I was a seventh-rounder,” Owens said.
Before entering the NFL, the Plantation (Fla.) High School alumnus had surgeries on both knees. Despite a successful career at Georgia, his medical record likely played a role in a draft slide. Owens believed he would be picked earlier, and was told on draft weekend that the Kansas City Chiefs considered drafting him in the third round, as did the Chicago Bears in the fifth round. Neither materialized.
The injury also was his biggest reason for hanging up the cleats after getting released by the Eagles.
“I could have tried to fight to come back, but I already had my degree from Georgia, so it’s like, ‘Might as well start working,’” Owens said.
But work didn’t take the former Eagle far from football. Owens quickly landed a job as an assistant coach at West Forsyth (Ga.) High School. Fifteen years later, he still works in coaching and is now the defensive line coach at NAIA Campbellsville University in Kentucky. What’s kept Owens in the profession so long is the impact he’s had on his players.
“Taking a kid who really didn’t have a direction, then see the kid graduate, see the kid become a husband, see the kid become a dad, and then years later, I have guys I’ve coached … [who] reach back out,” Owens said. “So that’s what’s impactful, is knowing that it doesn’t go in vain.”
