Introduction to these player comments
Index of player comments
Glossary of terms
Randy Moss career statistics

OK, I'll lay my irrational biases out on the table right up front: I like Randy Moss. I have a knee-jerk reaction to like guys like Moss because I think people dislike them for the wrong reasons.

None of us has any idea what kind of person Randy Moss is. The prevailing opinion on Moss is that he's a great natural talent, but his lack of work ethic is preventing him from reaching his full potential. Putting aside for a moment the fact that willingness to work hard and emotional maturity are, to a large extent, natural abilities too, the truth of the matter is that none of us has any idea at all how hard Randy works or has worked to get where he is.

And now, about this "I'll play when I want to play" business....

I think it's quite possible that Randy wasn't being completely truthful with those comments, and that his motivation for making them was embarrassment. He was off to the worst start of his career. For the first time in his life, he was showing signs of being a run-of-the-mill receiver. Maybe Moss thinks that being beaten physically is a bigger sin than being beaten mentally. Maybe he was giving the same effort he had always given and was still not getting the job done. So he had to make a choice on what to tell the world:

• that he just flat gets beat sometimes; or
• that he only gets beat when he decides to get beat.

Am I a Randy Moss apologist? Yes. Do I know anything at all about what makes Randy tick? No. Do I have any psychological expertise to lend credence to what I've said above? No. But that doesn't stop anyone else from spewing their opinions on Randy Moss, so why should it stop me?