Marriage between Moss and Raiders just won't work
Column by Monte Poole
Article Last Updated:11/22/2006 08:08:46 AM PST
THEY LIKE to throw the deep pass, so they obtained theleague's superior deep threat.
They embrace the notion of baggage and talent in a single package, so they acquired a touchdown machine with a renegade reputation.
They needed a new start, he needed a new start, and it just made sense, given their apparent compatibility, that they become partners and begin their sprint toward prosperity.
The Raiders' decision 20 months ago to marry Randy Moss was, theoretically, conceived in the lap of logic, a practically perfect match of player and system. Nowhere in the NFL was there a man whose talents better fit his team's schemes and concepts than Randy and the Raiders.
Now, 26 games later, there is no avoiding the evidence branding this union an abject failure. Raiders-Moss has been downright catastrophic, leaving both parties grotesquely disfigured, ruined for the foreseeable future.
Moss came here to collect another 40 or 50 touchdowns, revive a sagging franchise and put an exclamation point on a Hall of Fame career.
Moss will, in all likelihood, leave town at age 30, with signs of midcareer burnout, wondering ifhis highway to Canton was sabotaged by his brief and joyless stay behind the eye patch.
Remember how Moss was welcomed to Oakland after the trade? He arrived at Oakland International, was whisked into a limo and received a police escort to Raiders headquarters.
It was an entrance fit for a savior or a king. Insofar as Moss was generally considered NFL royalty, it was a conspicuous manifestation of the value the team placed in its newest member.
The Raiders had made a bold move, doing whatever was necessary to make themselves matter again, creating significant buzz around the city and the league. The Raider Nation was ecstatic.
Since that day, however, they have won six games, while losing 20. It is the most pathetic 26-game stretch of the 431/2 years they have spent under the spell of Al Davis.
Moreover, Moss has become irrelevant.
He has been, in Oakland, an acutely unexceptional wide receiver. Once drawn to the end zone like a flower to the sun, Moss rarely finds the place and doesn't always look comfortable when he does. His Pro Bowl status is practically rusted over.
As this season has slogged along, Randy's focus has turned foggy, his hands have hardened, and his passion has turned to apathy. It's as if he has cloned the most despised athletic characteristics of so many other talents who came and went, having dumped a pile of unfulfilled promise across local hopes.
Do the names Billy Owens, Rickey Dudley, Jeff George, Ruben Sierra or J.J. Stokes mean anything?
Seeing Moss jog to a stop, arms passively at his sides, witnessing Kansas City safety Jarrad Page intercept Aaron Brooks' pass — intended for Moss — in the end zone Sunday was merely the latest sign of Randy's disgust with his employer.
Even before that, though, you couldn't pitch a dart in the dark without hitting a flashing red light of his displeasure here.
Just last Friday Moss asked, rather politely, to be sent elsewhere, anywhere.
Four days before that, he conceded his formerly reliable hands have become a liability, saying it may be the result of his unhappiness here.
A few weeks before that, he implied knowledge of why the Raiders aren't able to finish off even average opponents — but kept his thoughts to himself.
It was last month when he asked a simple question, the essence of which was: Since the Raiders aren't doing what they can to win, why should I?
It was Moss, you may recall, who warned us during summer that some "fishy" stuff was going on with the Raiders.
After eight losses in 10 games, the fish is old and stinking and visible to the world.
Raiders-Moss wasn't a predictable disaster on the order of Bobby and Whitney, Britney and K-Fed, or O.J. and Fox News. But the result is the same, an ugly breakup to which both parties contributed.
The Raiders should have known what everybody else knew about Moss, that he requires considerable maintenance and does his best work under optimum conditions. That, they have not provided. Not even close.
Yet for a while, Moss was the model teammate, praised for his selflessness, his humor, his efforts to generate esprit de corps.
What did that get him? The man who scored 91 touchdowns in 109 games in Minnesota has scored 11 in 26 games in Oakland. The dynamic tandem of Moss and Jerry Porter never quite materialized.
So this has been a slow erosion of Randy's already fragile mental toughness. As things have splintered and frayed and fractured around him, Moss clearly became demoralized, giving up on his team and, by extension, himself.
No wonder he wants out. It is the best thing for him and for the Raiders. Both parties, easy targets for critics, need to see if they can recapture what they once possessed.
On New Year's Eve night, after the their last game, the Raiders should vow to move Moss. Such an act would acknowledge the obvious: Sometimes marriages seemingly made in heaven sink to a substantially lower place.
Monte Poole can be reached at (510) 208-6461 or by e-mail at mpoole@angnewspapers.com.
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