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Question marks Moodiness aside, Moss deal neither good nor bad
Updated: Thursday August 09, 2001 3:08 PM
It's impossible to analyze Randy Moss' record-setting contract and fall completely on one side or the other. It's neither a great deal nor a bad deal. But the Vikings, facing the loss of offensive staples Robert Smith and Cris Carter in back-to-back seasons, thought it was an essential one. The ultimate questions are these: Is a player who touches the ball 4.5 plays a game -- about one out of every 16 offensive snaps, which is how many receptions per game Moss has averaged in his first three seasons -- worth the biggest per-year contract in NFL history? Is a player who gains 87 yards a game -- Moss' average through three years -- worthy of a signing bonus bigger than Brett Favre or Jerry Rice or Peyton Manning has even gotten?
And is a player as moody and prone to sulking and taking plays off as Moss is deserving of such good faith on the part of the Vikings? What if Moss decides after three years he wants to try basketball full-time, or some other career? That would murder the Vikings' cap to the tune of an $11 million charge. But the Vikings, by not signing Moss, risked him going in the tank all year. And with Carter slated to retire after the season, they might not have many more Super Bowl chances, and they couldn't risk Moss being a distraction all season. In the end, the Moss signing is a classic example of why very good players, even those who touch the ball once per quarter of a football game, will always force owners to pay them more than owners want to pay. Because owners are petrified of losing -- or alienating -- franchise players.
Return of The GravediggerYou want an early candidate for Comeback Player of the Year? Try this extra-large one on for size: Green Bay defensive tackle Gilbert Brown. You remember Brown, the bowling-ball of a defensive tackle who plugged the middle for the Super Bowl Packers five years ago. Brown was a great player when healthy and in shape, which wasn't very often. When he got heavy, he got hurt, like Refrigerator Perry of a decade earlier, and by 1999 he'd eaten himself out of the NFL. Last Thanksgiving, one Packer told me, Brown weighed 400 pounds. But he went back to his college roots over the winter, to the University of Kansas, and whipped himself into fighting shape. He's down to 333, just below his playing weight of 1996, and the Packers are counting on him to contend for his old starting job. As Green Bay personnel czar Mark Hatley told me: "Gilbert's athletic again, and light on his feet. He could be one of the great stories of the year."
No pain, all gain for FavreDon't look for Favre to have a recurrence of the tendinitis that plagued his throwing arm last summer in camp and caused him to get off to a slow start. Head coach Mike Sherman handed him 10 footballs when he left Green Bay's minicamp last month and told Favre: "I want these to come back all scuffed up." And Favre, Packer spies say, has been throwing pain-free near his home in Hattiesburg, Miss. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and appears each Sunday on CNN's NFL Preview.
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