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MTZehvor on 08 September 2019
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Snoopy said:
MTZehvor said:

This is such an insanely bad take for so many reasons.

First, Moss was only with Brady/Belichick for two seasons before being traded to Minnesota. That's an extremely small window to win a Super Bowl. Jerry Rice didn't win a Super Bowl with Walsh/Montana until his fourth season. Emmitt Smith didn't win a ring with Johnson/Aikman until his third season. It's insane logic to call either of those players failures because they didn't win a Super Bowl within two years of working with a star combo.

Second, Moss would have won a Super Bowl in his first season with New England were it not for an extremely fluke play in the helmet catch. If Rodney Harrison punches that ball out, the Pats win. Are you really going to argue that a play that Moss wasn't even involved with somehow reflects poorly on him?

Finally, rings (like anything) are a poor be all end all measure of the quality of a player. Trent Dilfer was not a better QB than Dan Marino. Julian Edelman is not a better WR than Randy Moss. LaGarrette Blount is not a better RB than LaDanian Tomlinson. A lot more goes into winning a championship than a single player. It takes a team, and sometimes that isn't even enough. Sometimes you just get bad luck thrown your way, and you lose your SB shot as a result. It's absurd to knock Moss for the lack of a ring unless it was somehow his fault that his teams lost, and it never really was.

1. Moss was on the "Dream team" and didn't win. Patriots had possibly the best team on paper that year in NFL history.

2. The Patriots would've won if they scored more than 17 points. Too bad Randy moss didn't do much.

3. It's not the player's skill, but their attitude. T.O. had great stats, but he was cancer in the locker room causing the team to fall apart. 

#1: Rice was on the 1987 49ers, who, had they won the SB, likely would have been considered the best 49er team ever and one of the best teams of all time. Insane 206 point differential. Incredibly explosive offense that finished with 3000 yards passing and 1500 yards rushing, an amazing combination for the rules of that age. To this day, they're one of only two teams ever to finish #1 in offense and in defense in a season. They lost in the divisional round.

Shit happens in the NFL. Sometimes the "better" team doesn't win, especially in a one and done situation where you only need one bad day to have an entire season go down the drain. There's an element of randomness that makes things unpredictable, which is great as far as entertainment value goes (NBA playoffs are boring as hell imo), but also means that judging a team based on one game, let alone a player, is foolish.

#2: Having gone over that game way more than I'd ever like to, Randy Moss actually contributed quite a bit. He and Welker were one of the few bright spots of the day, combining for over 75% of New England's offense. Moss was also responsible for half of New England's points. Our offensive line got blown up all day long, Brady didn't handle pressure well, and everything else crumbled as a result. Pinning that on Moss is just silly.

#3: Moss' attitude was fine from 07-09. Plenty of interviews have attested to that fact. Issues arose in 2010, at which point he was traded, but to argue that the Patriots somehow didn't make a smart investment on Moss from 07-09 is asinine. And even if you disregard Moss purely because "no rings," there's a variety of examples of Patriots bringing in players with supposed "character issues" from other teams and winning championships with them playing a significant role (Corey Dillon, Rodney Harrison, Darelle Revis, Michael Bennett, etc.).