washingtonpost.com
Randy Moss is the greatest wide receiver in the game today. When you have a talent like that, you've got to keep him interested -- that's the coach's job and Bill Belichick is among the best. In fact, I'm sure he's sat Randy down, and told him what he needs to hear. I've been to meetings like that, I can hear his voice in my head. He probably said something like: "Randy, for us to win you're going to need to buy into everything I say 100 percent. You handle what you need to handle and I'll handle everything else."
But he understands Randy, he understands that level of talent. It's like dealing with a great artist or a genius. Any time he wants, he can just flip a switch and smoke any secondary out there. When you have it that easy though, you can get distracted. Maybe something happened off the field to distract him.
So Randy doesn't go 100 percent on every play, sometimes he takes a little off. But now, because the Patriots aren't the dominating team they were in 2007, people want to blame Moss. What people don't recognize is that maybe he wasn't playing at 100 percent all the time when they were undefeated. Football is a team game and you don't hear him saying the defense isn't stepping up.
This concept may be demoralizing to younger guys struggling to make a team, that Randy has so much talent and can dog it. The older guys, who know Moss, understand. Just cause he dogs it one play doesn't mean he won't go in there the next play and blow everyone away.
Great players, like Randy, need to take a break sometimes, and great coaches like Belichick understand how to exploit that.