People who think age is a b**** are being far too generous. Age is an angry beast with a big chip on its shoulder, and it always has a score to settle with you. No one feels this more acutely than professional athletes confronting the vagaries of increasing frailty at an age that society beyond the arena still considers young.

One of the annual rituals of the NFL offseason is watching stars come to this realization via contract maneuvering and free agency. In the past week, wide receiver Terrell Owens and running back LaDainian Tomlinson, two players whose public persona couldn’t be more different, arrived at comparably graceful ways of dealing with twilight of their careers.

Owens is flamboyant in the extreme; his antics have set the gold standard for look-at-me behavior in the NFL. Owens has augmented his on-field antics by warring in the press with each of his last three quarterbacks. All this carrying-on has been tolerated because Owens has been an enormously productive receiver. He has been selected to the all-pro team five times this decade, and his career aggregates rank him fourth in touchdown catches, fifth in gained yards and sixth in number of receptions. He’s a pain in the butt, but he’s generally worth it for the short term.

Last week, the Dallas Cowboys, his team of the last three years, decided that the short term was over. Owens is 35, and his numbers declined last year. And his drop rate, always high for a receiver of his caliber, increased dramatically. According to the metrics, Owens failed to catch half the balls thrown his way. That’s excusable if Owens was trying to catch passes from an erratic signal caller like Rex Grossman or Tarvaris Jackson, but he wasn’t. The Cowboys’ quarterback is Tony Romo, strong-armed and accurate. The number was telling. For one, Owens was getting the same degree of separation from defenders he was in the past. (Owens always drops a few passes, but this past year, defenders seemed to be breaking up more plays that went his way.) The Cowboys probably decided that Owens had reached an age where downturns in performance were inexorable, and that he wasn’t worth the headaches.

That’s where it gets really interesting. Owens’ agent promised that his client wouldn’t stay unemployed long. Sure enough, before the weekend was done, Owens had become a member of the Buffalo Bills.

The signing was strange for many reasons. The Bills are not a team known for their flash, and the city is by far the smallest market in the NFL. Furthermore, they have a  No. 1 receiver, Lee Evans. Owens was quickly latching on to a team where he is a clear No. 2 option. I suspect that Owens or his handlers decided that the easiest way to save face from his breakup with the Cowboys was to sign on with another team quickly. By joining a team where he can go against the opposition’s second-best cornerback rather than its best, Owens is positioned to boost his sagging numbers. For a player whose public persona is built more on megalomania than intellect, this was a remarkably smart move. However, if Owens’ disruptive side gets the better of him, this will end badly for both him and the Bills.