Wide Receiver Terrell Owens was not the guy the defenders wanted to see when he carried the ball in the open field. Combined with his rare size and explosive strength, many in the league expected the Canton to come calling the moment he became eligible in 2016. Instead, the wait dragged on for three years, and it’s a snub Owens still hasn’t let go of.

Now, while looking back on his career highlights, Owens couldn’t hide his lingering frustration over the delayed induction.

“And to think the @ProFootballHOF made me wait 3 years to get in?!” Terrell Owens wrote on X on September 9.

Owens’ post came in response to a clip shared by ML Football featuring a highlight reel of him dodging defenders, which described the legendary wide receiver as simply “unstoppable.”

As one of the most unprecedented conflicts in league history, “the feud between Owens and Caton” first started when he was snubbed at the time of his first eligibility (2016 class) to be enshrined in the prestigious NFL Hall of Fame. Based on his stats, he had to be an effortless, first-ballot inductee, as believed by multiple NFL pundits. But what happened next was not expected. 

After three years of the wait, Owens was finally selected as a Hall of Fame WR for the class of 2018. And instead of attending the induction ceremony, he held his own celebration at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, on the same day his fellow Hall of Fame inductees were being enshrined in Canton, Ohio.

During his 15-year-long career in the league, he played for the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys, and finally hung up his cleats after doing two stints with the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals. The Hall of Fame wide receiver started in 201 games out of 219 total games played. He covered 15,934 yards and scored 153 touchdowns with 1,078 receptions. 

“It became a point of being disrespected. And so understanding where I came from and how I got to where I where I got, with a lot of help, with a lot of people along the journey, me understanding like I wasn’t one of those athletic phenoms that really jumped on the scene right away and everybody knew, ‘This guy’s going to be good,'” said Owens on The Tenai Show on September 1. “There was a lot of hard work that went into that. There was a lot of sacrifice that went into that.”

It is not the first time he has called out Canton publicly, but didn’t he earn his right to be called the best in the league?

Take his legendary 20-catch game back in 2000, when Owens was lining up for the 49ers against the Chicago Bears, and he just could not be stopped by their defenders. He hauled in 20 receptions for 283 yards, setting an NFL record at that time.

Then there’s Super Bowl XXXIX, and honestly, this one might be the most jaw-dropping of the three. Owens had broken his leg and torn an ankle ligament just seven weeks earlier. It was a kind of injury that sidelines most players for months. 

His doctors strongly advised against him playing. Owens defied those warnings anyway, went out and grabbed nine catches for 122 yards on the biggest stage in football. 

Yet despite the feud, Owens has admitted the delay wasn’t all Canton’s doing. Even after calling out the media and the voters, he ultimately blames himself.