The Patriots won on Sunday. Ugly. But they still beat the lowly Panthers 20-10. Yet the Patriots snapping their first 2-game losing streak since the 2006 season is not the story Monday morning. It's Randy Moss. Again.
Randy Moss caught only one pass for 16 yards and promptly fumbled the ball afterward. His routes were lackluster, and he was seemingly shutdown the entire game. This was the topic of conversation of the Panthers cornerbacks after the game; coming just days after Moss was sent home for arriving late to an 8 AM practice. Here's what some of the Panthers' players had to say:
"We knew he was going to shut it down. That's what we wanted him to do. That's what we did ... He'd just give up a lot. Slow down, he's not going deep, not trying to run a route. You can tell, his body language. I know everyone who plays against him, they can sense that. Once you get into him in the beginning of the game, he shuts it down a little bit."
This is coming from a 5-8 team struggling to stay afloat in arguably one of the worst divisions in football. Does Chris Gamble--or any of the Panthers for that matter--have the right to accuse a player of packing it in during a game? Randy Moss is one of the greatest wide receivers in the history of the NFL, of course he's going to get the best out of any player he matches up with. Instead of praising his own defense for the job they did on Moss, he indirectly takes a shot at his own team. Is he saying had Moss not shut it down, they wouldn't have been able to defend him? Hhhmm.
This is just another instance of the media blowing a story out of proportion for the sake of creating a buzz about an otherwise boring game. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick both came to the side of Moss after the game.
"When guys play Randy, they want to show everyone what they can do. I guess they came out of the game pretty confident. Randy is one of the best players in the history of the NFL. When it doesn't go perfect out there, everyone wants to jump on Randy. It's all of us, and we all have to do a better job. Everyone takes liberty to say whatever they want to say in a situation like [Sunday]," Brady told WEEI today. "I've seen plenty of plays made on Chris Gamble, too, over the course of the season."
My response would be that's a lot of conversation coming from a team that lost another game," Belichick said. "I have a lot of respect for Randy, I think he's one of our best players and I think if you watch other teams defend him and watch other teams play against him, they think the same way -- other than these two guys from Carolina after they lost another game. I guess they don't think that way. They haven't won a lot of games now."
So will this have a lasting affect on the Patriots' locker room? If it doesn't affect Moss it won't affect the team. As long as they continue to stand behind each other and act as one, the Patriots should be impervious to the media bug.
[In a related story, Adalius "George Jetson" Thomas was inactive for Sunday's game. I wouldn't be surprised if he stays inactive for the rest of the season.]
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