ESPN analyst Randy Moss had an interesting look back on the April 2007 trade that sent him from the wastelands in Oakland to the promised land in New England.
The ESPN interview came in response to Tuesday’s NFL trade deadline, as well as the news that Jamie Collins was traded from New England to Cleveland. Here are some of the best excerpts from the interview:
“I got a phone call and it was Bill Belichick,” Moss remembers. “I thought it was a friend or somebody playing with my phone. I actually cussed him out. When he kept saying it was Bill Belichick, I knew he was serious. I started being apologetic because I had cussed the man. Then he told me the Raiders were thinking about trading me. I had to be in Foxborough by 10 p.m. Eastern, or the trade would void. So, I just did everything that I could possibly do to get up there by 10 p.m.”
“Bill basically said he thought I was still effective, that I could be the deep threat like when I came into the league. All those little things. He still had faith. He still believed I could go out there and do what I normally do.”
He added that he knows and saw why the Raiders wanted to trade him, largely because he wasn’t that productive with the Raiders and he wasn’t “really tuned in to what was going on in Oakland.”
Here are some of his thoughts on his time with the Patriots.
“One thing it let me do was refocus. I understood where I was in my career and that I still wanted to play. And I understood that I still had a lot of football left to play. It was about me redefining myself as an individual, working hard, getting refocused. We started winning every week, and it just gave me momentum. I was scoring touchdowns, I was blocking, doing all the little things that receivers don’t do in today’s game. That gave me the ability to critique myself — the good and the bad. I think that’s why good things were able to happen. We held each other accountable, no matter what.”
That clearly didn’t happen in Oakland at all, but the Patriots and Raiders were different organizations then and still are now.
And as for whether he has any regrets about his time with the Patriots, the regrets are what you think they might be.
“The only regret: Having an undefeated season, doing so many great things, then, when the game counted for us to really bring it home in the Super Bowl, we couldn’t bring it home.”
[ESPN]
