Rising from the dead.

They both wore #81. They were both regarded as top wide receivers. They both have bad locker-room reputations. They both have not won a Super Bowl ring. And they're both trying to come back.

Randy Moss and Terrell Owens are looking at comebacks, still hungry for glory. But will anyone give them that opportunity? The Yahoo! Sports NFL blog, Shutdown Corner, has some good posts about Moss and Owens and their desire to return. Both men have plenty of confidence; Owens says "Everybody knows I'm in great shape. It's just a matter of getting the opportunity." Moss claims he can run a 4.3 and he's "comin' to tear somebody's heads off."

Despite this brimming bravado, there are huge obstacles in the way of their glorious returns. Moss has always been known as a problematic ego who will drop his effort when he's feeling pouty. He seemed to lose that part of his reputation in his stint with the Patriots, putting up that huge 2007 season, but quickly regained it in his short and ugly return to the Vikings and failure to make an impact on the Titans. He wants to win a Super Bowl with someone, but it seems like a long shot that Super Bowl-caliber teams would want such a volatile character messing with their team chemistry, even if he can run a 4.3.

As for Owens, he has a long reputation of spats with quarterbacks and coaches, bouncing from the 49ers to the Eagles to the Cowboys. Lately, however, he's been a model teammate, keeping quiet during a statistically quiet season in Buffalo and a more successful season with the Bengals. His season-ending knee injury, however, raises new questions. Is he the same T.O. that used to terrorize secondaries? Can he really elevate a team to a championship, or is he just another washed-up veteran desperate to stay in the game (cough Favre cough)?

Like many questions surrounding the NFL, these questions are impossible to answer before the fact. If a team decides to take the risk of signing either of these guys, and if they put their ego aside, and if they can still play at a higher than average level, and if the rest of the team is playing at a high level... sure, they can have successful comebacks and win that elusive championship ring. But that's a lot of ifs. It's just as possible that one of them will join a team thinking it's one explosive player away from the Super Bowl (Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and the New York Jets spring to mind), contribute little to nothing, have a huge public blowup, and be unceremoniously dumped into obscurity. There's just no way to predict it. Personally, I find it more likely that a middling team will sign one of them, get some "meh" production from them, and drop them after that one-year contract, just like Cincinnati did with T.O. and the Titans did with Moss.

These guys think they can come back and win the big one. But does anyone else think so?