Moss ready to earn his keep
Son of Hall of Famer went undrafted, chose team that called first
When the NFL draft ended with his name still uncalled, Thaddeus Moss said his emotions “were all over the place,” the whole thing “a slap in the face.” So when his agent called shortly after with the names of three teams that wanted to sign him, all he cared about was who called first.
Which is how the tight end from LSU, the son of Hall of Fame wide receiver Randy Moss, chose the Washington Redskins.
It didn’t matter that one of the other two teams was the New England Patriots, for whom his father once starred and a team that had built Super Bowl champion offenses around tight ends. Nor was he interested in the other team, Cincinnati, which had just drafted his college quarterback, Joe Burrow. Neither had phoned before the Redskins. Neither could have wanted him as much.
“That’s what I was going to go with and stick with,” Moss said Wednesday on a video conference call.
Undrafted rookie free agents rarely get special news conferences. At rookie minicamps such as the one Washington would have had this month, they are the invisible pieces swirling unnoticed around the players taken in the recent draft. But Moss is different, a man with a famous last name who many of the team’s fans had hoped it would draft given his pedigree and the fact the Redskins don’t have an obvious starting tight end, perhaps the team’s greatest hole.
All of this makes Moss different from most NFL rookies. He spoke with determination and with a hint of an edge on the call, his words flat when he described how players “will know” how hard he blocks when practices ultimately start. When asked whether he will introduce himself to star running back Adrian Peterson, who briefly played with Randy Moss in Minnesota, he said no, not to be impolite but “that’s not me.”
His tone was clear. He is here to prove he belongs in the NFL.
He said he is “not going out there with a vengeance” to show the other teams they made a mistake when they didn’t choose him in the draft. He had a sense as the last day of selections wore on that he probably wasn’t going to be taken.
Most scouting reports noted that Moss didn’t have the speed that would allow him to race downfield to catch long throws but highlighted his willingness to block and catch short, contested passes. He also had a small Jones fracture in his foot, an injury discovered at the scouting combine that needed surgery and a two- to three-month recovery. These things created trouble for his draft stock. Still, the snub burned at him.
“I put a lot of work in, years of football. We went undefeated and won a national championship [this past season at LSU], and I played my best ball in my biggest games, so I definitely felt it was a slap in the face not getting drafted [and] having kickers and punters and special teams guys getting picked over me,” Moss said.
When the draft was over, Randy Moss didn’t know what to say. Thaddeus did, however.
He told his father that he was going to fight to make an NFL roster because he’s always had to fight to show people that simply having the same last name as a Hall of Fame football player was never a free ticket to anything.