Volume CXXXIII, Number 4 October 3, 2003 f

Give Moss a little more credit
NICK LAROCQUE
STAFF WRITER

Not everyone gets to be Tom Brady. Two years ago, he made the flawless transition from sixth-round draft pick to Super Bowl MVP and the NFL's new "golden boy." The combination of a storybook Super Bowl season, good looks, and a very marketable personality ensured that Tom Brady posters were on walls in bedrooms all across America.

Tom should feel fortunate, as there are very few players who can exceed the expectations of fans so tremendously. He represents one extreme end of the spectrum.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Anti-Brady. There is perhaps no player who better fills this role than Minnesota Vikings wide reciever Randy Moss. There is nothing that sports fans hate more than talented players with discipline problems who constantly underachieve. Once a player has been branded with one of these labels, or both in Moss's case, it is nearly impossible for him to clear his name.

The discipline problems of Randy Moss are well-documented, and go all the way back to his high school days. A racially-driven fight during his senior year of high school was the first in a series of discipline problems that would cost him numerous opportunities throughout his career. Because of this fight, Moss lost his golden opportunity to play for Lou Holtz at the University of Notre Dame. In the summer of 1996, after his redshirt year at Florida State, Moss tested positive for marijuana and was once again forced to forfeit an opportunity to play for an elite program.

And so it came that Randy Moss, the most athletically-gifted football player to come out of high school in a decade, the player who had been dubbed by the Great Lou Holtz as "the best athlete I have ever seen," was headed to play for the then-Division I-AA Marshall Thundering Herd, bringing a lot of excess baggage with him.

Despite keeping clean for two years and establishing himself as one of the greatest college football receivers of all time, there were many NFL teams that hesitated to take a chance on Moss because of his past. Nineteen of them to be exact. The Minnesota Vikings drafted Moss with the 21st pick, and he proved to be just as much of a handful for them as he was for the teams who defended him on the field.

Since coming to the NFL, Moss has had several run-ins with the law, the most recent being an altercation with a traffic officer last season. It is not difficult to understand why fans find fault in his off-the-field behavior. Many of his actions are inexcusable and would be punished more severely were Moss not a professional athlete.

Moss is by no stretch of the imagination the first athlete who has found himself in legal trouble. Lawrence Taylor, the great New York Giants linebacker, had a history of cocaine abuse, yet today he still stands as one of the most beloved players in New York sports history. Theoren Fleury, a very talented winger who currently plays for the Chicago Blackhawks, carries excess baggage with him wherever he goes to play. Fleury's actions have had a serious impact on his team lately, as he missed almost all of last season. Yet people still love Theo Fleury.

On the whole, sports fans have never taking a liking to Randy Moss. Even after Moss publicly apologized for his behavior last year, and vowed that he would turn over a new leaf, fans still refuse to shed their negative views of him. So, what I want to know is this: Why is nobody willing to look past the personal problems of Randy Moss and appreciate him for his abilities as a football player? The answer is clear, but does not make much sense: fans view Moss as an underachiever.

Ever since signing his second contract, which made him the highest paid wide receiver in the NFL, Moss has been criticized by fans and players for being an underachiever. If this claim is true, then I would like to see what an over-achiever looks like. Moss has been nothing short of dominant since he entered the NFL in 1998. In fact, in the five full seasons that Moss has played he has recorded 414 receptions for 6,743 yards. That is more receptions and more yards than Jerry Rice had after his first five years. It is more than Marvin Harrison had after his first five seasons. In fact, it is more than ANY RECIEVER in NFL history has ever had in their first five years. In those five years he had 61 touchdowns. The only player to have more touchdowns than Moss since 1998 is Rams running-back Marshall Faulk, who was the feature weapon in an offense that averaged more points than any team in history.

People have also criticized Moss' lack of toughness, saying that he often puts himself ahead of the team. However, Moss has played in all 80 of the Vikings games since he has entered the league, starting in 75 of them. Certainly, if Moss were as soft as people claim, there would have been physical ailments somewhere along the way (he does play professional football) that would have caused him to miss a game. People have claimed that Moss' productivity dropped after his first two years, and that he has not been playing as well since he signed his big contract. However, this is also not true. Moss is only getting better, and 2002 was the best season, statistically speaking, that he has had yet. At this point in his career, Randy Moss is on pace to be the most productive receiver in NFL history.

It is for this reason that I cannot view Moss as an underachiever. However, it has been known to the football public over the past few seasons that Moss' off-season work habits left something to be desired.

This off-season was different. After the team's mini-camps in Winter Park, head coach Mike Tice made a point of mentioning that Moss, along with Chris Hovan and Daunte Culpepper, stood out as one of the hardest workers in mini-camp, and that he had seemed to be stepping into a leadership role on the team. This is a void that had needed filling on this team since the retirement of Cris Carter and the death of Korey Stringer.

In mid-August, reports broke that Moss had not spent the summer playing semi-pro basketball as he usually does. He had instead been involved in a rigorous training program in Florida that involved sprinting on beaches with a weighted harness. He was reportedly more explosive, and had gained ten pounds of muscle. It was not the physical aspect of this report that was the most intriguing, as Moss has always been physically superior to his opponents for all of his life. What seemed more important was that Moss was starting to mature, and become a leader on his team. He has been superb so far this year, torching teams that try to play single coverage against him, and eating up the double coverage of other teams while creating plays for the other offensive players.

Maybe this will be the year that Randy Moss finally gets the recognition he deserves. He made a statement to his critics on Sunday in a much hyped-up home game against the San Francisco 49ers, and their stud wide-receiver Terell Owens. Before the game, the strong majority of analysts had made it clear that they would take Owens over Moss if they were the General Manager of a team. Moss had been suffering all week from back spasms, and his starting quarterback, Daunte Culpepper, was not playing because of broken bones in his back. If ever there was a situation made for underachievers struggling to live up to their title, this was it. However, it was Randy Moss who walked off the field victorious on Sunday. Eight catches, 172 yards, 3 Tds, and a 4-0 record.

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