Things have been a lot quieter on the practice fields at Minnesota State University in Mankato and in the Minnesota Vikings’ locker room, both at their practice facility and at the Metrodome.
Conversely, the expectations have been raised considerably in California. From the time Randy Moss arrived at training camp in a limo, through his first day at practice, pulling up at the Oakland Raiders’ complex in a tricked-out purple SUV, through the HBO interview where the wide receiver said that, while he doesn’t suffer from glaucoma, he occasionally indulges in a bit of herbal relief, there has been no shortage of combustion surrounding the AFC West team.
“I know this: With him out there, it’s a different deal,” quarterback Kerry Collins said.
The Vikings, whom Moss amazed and bewildered for seven seasons, and the Raiders, who acquired the mercurial talent in the offseason, are happy with where they are today. The question is, who will be happier come playoff time? The Vikings say that despite Moss’ enormous gifts, they’re now better off without him. Coach Mike Tice, long one of Moss’ biggest supporters during his time there, now merely refers to him as “the player.”
“I don’t like to be predictable; I’ve never tried to be predictable. In the past, a lot of our offense went to Randy. Now, we’re going to use everybody, put the ball in everybody’s hands,” Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper said of life without Moss.
“That’s what good offenses do. That’s how football should be played. That’s how Joe Montana played it, that’s how Troy Aikman played it. All the great ones, John Elway, those guys spread the ball around.”
The Raiders, meanwhile, envisioning a lineup featuring Moss, Jerry Porter and Ronald Curry at receiver, with another newcomer, LaMont Jordan, at running back, feel they have the potential for the greatest offensive attack this side of Indianapolis, or at least San Diego, Kansas City or Denver.
“We’ll watch everything happen and watch where we end up,” Oakland defensive back Nnamdi Asomugha said.
Moss has been surprisingly circumspect, at least with the media, during his brief tenure with the Raiders. Other than one impromptu news conference during the first week of camp, and the HBO interview, there have been virtually no utterances.
Part of the reason, he said, was his desire to concentrate on grasping the Raiders’ offense, which is more complex than his former system.
“It’s night and day,” he said. “The playbook in Minnesota was like one-plus-one. Here it’s more like Algebra II.”
Another factor in the distance Moss has kept is his wariness at dealing with the media, which he feels contributed to his unceremonious departure from Minnesota. During virtually any conversation with a Raider during training camp, there was a reference made to Moss not being the demon the media had made him out to be throughout the assorted controversies that were part of his Vikings experience.
Indeed, among Oakland teammates, Moss has been a leader almost from the time he arrived. While getting dressed, he begins a running repartee that continues during team stretches and into and throughout practice.
“He gets us ready,” Asomugha said. “He’s talking trash on the field. He’ll pick out a DB’s number and say, ‘This is who I’ve got today.’ He’s cracking jokes. It’s all really helped us a lot.”
But there was similar patter in Minnesota, and eventually, the Moss act wore thin, even among teammates. Throughout his time in Minnesota, there was friction about how often he was thrown the football, and the same potential is present in Oakland, given the multitude of weapons available.
During camp, Collins said that while he had not talked to Moss or any of his teammates about that subject, he hoped that team
success would quell any individual frustration.
“Inevitably those conversations will come up,” Collins said. “That’s just part of it. It’s not a bad problem to have, having so many talented guys. People say, ‘Are you going to have enough balls to go around?’ Well, I think guys understand that one day a guy is going to have his day and another guy may on another day.
“In the whole scheme of things, it’s going to open up things for everybody else. I’m going to make decisions, and hopefully at the end of the day, they’ll say, ‘Kerry gave us a chance to win and although I didn’t get the ball as much as I would have liked, we won the game and that’s all that matters.”‘
Perhaps it will indeed be that simple, but somehow, one way or another, when it comes to Randy Moss, things don’t seem to turn out quite that way.
