Terrell Owens was not in attendance for the beginning of the Bills’ offseason workouts, which took place Monday morning.

Owens’ absence was not a big concern for Bills strength and conditioning coach John Allaire.

Stressing that the program is voluntary, Allaire said he was already impressed with the shape Owens was in when the two met shortly before the player signed with the Bills on March 7.

“He’s a physical specimen,” Allaire said. “He has a very good history of being in shape, ready to go. We’re not anticipating anything different this year.”

Having reviewed Owens’ workout program, Allaire said the two are “on the same page” and there isn’t much he needs to address.

Allaire would only say, “we’ll see,” when asked whether he expects Owens to take part in the 12-week conditioning program.

This situation shouldn’t be made into a big deal. As Allaire points out, T.O. is always in phenomenal shape. If this were a player that had previous weight and conditioning issues, then it would be a big deal. But Owens has never showed up to training camp out of shape and I don’t think he’ll do it this year.

But if you want to play devil’s advocate, then yeah, it would have been nice for Owens to show up on his first day and meet his new teammates. We don’t know what other obligations he had, but if they were minor, would it have killed him to show up on the first day and show a little good faith to the team that took a chance on him?

Update: Apparently Owens was absent because he is in D.C. receiving an award for raising awareness about Alzheimer’s Disease. Well done T.O., well done.

In his latest edition of “Monday Morning Quarterback”, Peter King writes that Trent Edwards wanted Bills’ chief operating office Russ Brandon to pursue Terrell Owens.

“How about T.O.?”

Bills chief operating office Russ Brandon woke up sometime after midnight Friday morning and noticed there was a text message on his cell phone. So he reached over and looked. It was from Trent
Edwards, the quarterback of the Bills. “How about T.O.?” That’s all it said.

Brandon shot back with this: “?”

“T.O. was released. Go get him,” Edwards texted back.

Brandon still seemed surprised when I spoke to him late Sunday. “I went back to sleep,” he said, “but I was stunned by it. The next morning, [coach] Dick Jauron and I talked, and he said, ‘I think it’s something we certainly should take a look at.’ I put a call into [owner] Ralph Wilson, and he said, ‘Absolutely look into it.”’

And that was it. The only team to seriously kick the tires on Owens got its man a day later for three major reasons:

1. The Bills think Jauron is the perfect coach — calm but commanding — to handle Mount Terrell.

2. The organization is sick of perpetually being one weapon away from catching New England (and Miami and the Jets, as it turns out), and it’s willing to take the risk of having Owens ruin the locker room so it can have a chance to win the division.

3. The Bills did the one-year deal for a fairly strategic reason, in my opinion. Owens is good when he’s trying to make a good first impression.

If Jeff Garcia, Donovan McNabb and Tony Romo read this, they no doubt laughed at how naïve Edwards is when it comes to what T.O. brings to a locker room. But at least the Bills knew Edwards was completely on board when they decided to pursue Owens.

There’s no doubt that Buffalo could use T.O.’s talent, but Edwards is in for a rude awakening. There was a Monday night game that the Bills played last season against the Browns. In that game, Edwards was petrified to pass the ball more than 5-10 yards and settled for check downs to Marshawn Lynch instead of going downfield. That’s a game where T.O. would no doubt express his frustration in a dysfunctional manner. I don’t think the signing was bad (especially since the Bills only signed him to a one-year deal), but hopefully Edwards and Co. know what they’re getting into.