By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 1, 2011
Wide receiver Randy Moss is retiring after 13 seasons as one of the most dynamic and polarizing players the N.F.L. has seen.
Moss’s agent, Joel Segal, said Monday that Moss, 34, had been considering offers from several teams, but made the decision to retire. Segal declined to comment specifically on the offers, instead saying Moss felt the time was right to step away.
“Randy has weighed his options and considered the offers and has decided to retire,” Segal said.
If this indeed is the end for Moss, he leaves the game with some of the gaudiest statistics ever posted by a receiver. His 153 touchdowns are tied with Terrell Owens for second on the career list, and he is fifth in yards (14,858) and tied with Hines Ward for eighth in receptions (954).
Those numbers, and his status as perhaps the best deep threat in N.F.L. history, will make him a strong candidate for the Hall of Fame. But voters will also be weighing those numbers and his six Pro Bowl seasons against a history of boorish behavior and a penchant for taking plays off when he lost interest during games.
His career started with seven electric seasons with the Minnesota Vikings before he went dormant for two years in Oakland. He re-emerged as a force with the New England Patriots in 2007, hauling in a single-season record 23 touchdown passes from Tom Brady to help the Patriots reach the Super Bowl. Moss was traded back to the Vikings in October of last season, but the reunion lasted just four weeks. Fed up with his behavior, Vikings Coach Brad Childress cut Moss in November, a stunning move that played a role in Childress’s dismissal a few weeks later.
Moss finished the season with eight games in Tennessee but made little impact. Segal said this summer that Moss was training hard and determined to prove to the doubters that he could still dominate.
Moss’s combination of size, speed and intelligence has rarely been seen in a player at his position, and he deserves some credit for the influx of Cover 2 defenses throughout the N.F.L. that were designed in large part to prevent Moss from wreaking so much havoc down the field.
Trouble off the field in high school prevented Moss from attending Notre Dame or Florida State, so he landed at Marshall and scored 54 touchdowns in two electrifying seasons with the Thundering Herd.
The off-field questions hurt Moss in the 1998 draft. He fell to the Vikings at pick No. 21 and spent the next seven years making every general manager in the league who passed on him regret it. He scored 17 touchdowns as a rookie to help the Vikings reach the N.F.C. title game and only once failed to score at least 10 touchdowns in a season in his first tour with the team.
He was also involved in several controversies, bumping a traffic cop in downtown Minneapolis, squirting a referee with a water bottle during a game and leaving the field early in a game against Washington, among other incidents. The Vikings traded Moss to Oakland in 2005, where he spent two quiet seasons before his career was revived in New England.
MEETING ON RETIREES ORDERED The N.F.L., its players union and lawyers for a group of retired players have been told to meet this month with a federal judge, who is likely to order them into mediation to address concerns raised by the retired players.
A group of retired players, led by Carl Eller, joined the players’ antitrust lawsuit against the N.F.L. But on Monday, the retired players sent a letter to the National Labor Relations Board saying the current players had prevented retired players from negotiating directly for retiree benefits, even though they were supposed to be part of mediated talks earlier this summer. It also said that the union had improperly negotiated retiree benefits while it was decertified as part of a negotiating strategy.
While the antitrust case, Brady v. N.F.L., will be withdrawn as part of the new collective bargaining agreement, the Eller group said it would not willingly dismiss its case. The group wants retiree benefits, which total nearly $1 billion in the new deal, separated from the new collective bargaining agreement. JUDY BATTISTA
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