Terrell Owens has agreed on a one-year, $2 million deal with the Cincinnati Bengals, a league source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter on Tuesday.
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According to the source, the deal also includes another $2 million in incentives.
Owens spent last season with the Buffalo Bills. He caught 55 passes for 829 yards and hauled in five touchdowns as the Bills finished the season 6-10.
The St. Louis Rams dropped out of the bidding for Owens on Monday and a source told Schefter earlier Tuesday the New York Jets expressed interest in the 36-year old wide receiver.
With Cincinnati, Owens will team with also-controversial wide receiver Chad Ochocinco as targets for Pro Bowl quarterback Carson Palmer. In 2009, Palmer and Ochocinco helped lead a resurgent Bengals team to the AFC North title and a spot in the wild card round of the playoffs.
The Bengals also signed wideout Antonio Bryant in the offseason.
Owens was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in the third round in 1996 out of the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. The Bengals will be his fifth team in a 14-year career, split between San Francisco, the Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys and Buffalo.
All of Owens' career stops, save Buffalo, have ended in controversy. In San Francisco, Owens ridiculed then-49ers quarterback Jeff Garcia in a magazine interview in 2004. Owens and San Francisco became embroiled in a messy divorce, with Owens claiming her could void the remainder of his contract.
The Niners claimed Owens and his agent had missed a contractual deadline and attempted to trade him to the Baltimore Ravens for a second-round pick in the 2004 draft. Owens and the NFLPA challenged the Niners' rights to deal him and eventually all parties reached a deal to send Owens to the Eagles.
After a banner first year in Philadelphia that saw the Eagles reach the Super Bowl, Owens asked the Eagles to re-do the contract he had signed just a year earlier after the trade. Owens and Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb also clashed both on the sidelines and in the media. As Owens continued to complain during the season, the team suspended Owens for four games and eventually deactivated him for the remainder of the season.
Tired of Owens' show, the Eagles released him and he signed with NFC East rival Dallas. Owens' first-season was fraught with injury and he eventually had two surgeries to repair a torn tendon in a finger on his right hand.
In 2007, Owens had a banner year, bringing in 1,355 yards and 15 TDs, but the Cowboys lost in the divisional round of the playoffs. After the loss, Owens broke down in tears in the postgame news conference defending quarterback Tony Romo. However, Owens' productivity and relationship with Romo and offensive coordinator Jason Garrett began to fray during the 2008 season and Owens was cut after the year.
Statistically though, Owens has been regarded as one of the best in the league when at the top of his game. The six-time Pro Bowler has 1,006 receptions and 14,951 yards in his NFL career. His 147 career touchdowns are the fifth-highest total in NFL history.
Owens is widely regarded as a polarizing figure, but he said in a June interview on NFL Network that his public perception may have damaged his appeal to NFL teams.
"I've heard a lot of the reasons why I'm not on a team right now," Owens told the NFL Network. "It's because people feel I've disrupted some teams, I'm a cancer -- I've heard all those things. They've said that for the last five, six years. The teams I've been on, if you ask in that locker room how I've been as a teammate and as a person, it's contradictory to what's been displayed out there."
Owens still views himself as a premier player, but some teams have a different feeling.
"You know, last year, we jumped on board with Buffalo, and that was a team that was interested in myself," Owens continued, "and I just felt like I always wanted to be where I was wanted, and Buffalo jumped at the gun at that, so I spent my year in Buffalo."
ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter contributed to this report.
