The ball was flying down the field often for Minnesota during that drizzly night in Green
Bay
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to get it.
Five games into his NFL career, Moss was a star. He was a revolutionary, too. There was no moment that better defined his arrival as the league's premier deep
threat than that breakout prime-time performance against the two-time reigning
NFC champion and bitter rival Packers.
"Seeing Randall Cunningham smile, seeing him energetic," Moss said, reflecting on his five-catch, 190-yard, two-touchdown connection with Cunningham
that carried the Vikings to a 37-24 victory. "It was just a great feeling."
When the Vikings landed in Minnesota, his half-brother, Eric Moss, who was briefly his teammate, wondered about the celebrating the big win.
"I said, 'Going out? No, I want to go home,'" Moss said.
Then defensive tackle John Randle tapped him on the shoulder.
"Man, we're going to party tonight!" Moss said, recalling Randle's pronouncement to the rookie. "That's when I finally understood what it really
meant to the guys for us to go into Lambeau and win."
Twenty years later, with Moss set to enter the Pro Football Hall of Fame this weekend after being elected in his first year of
eligibility
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Brown Jersey , the swift, sleek and sometimes-sassy wide receiver has
finally understood the depth of his impact on the game and the privilege of
opportunity to serve as a celebrant of the sport.
"I came into the league with, I guess, my head not really screwed on my shoulders properly," Moss said recently on a conference call with reporters.
Over time, the "homebody-type guy" from tiny Rand, West Virginia, who ranks second in NFL history in touchdown receptions (156) and fourth in receiving
yards (15,292), learned how to soften some of the edges he's carried since he
was a kid.
"I've been able to open myself up and meet more people, be able to travel the world," said Moss, who's in his third season as an ESPN analyst. "Football here
in America is a very powerful sport, and just being in that gold jacket,
hopefully I can just be able to continue to reach people and continue to do
great things."
Moss will become the 14th inductee from the Vikings, joining former teammates Cris Carter, Chris Doleman, Randall McDaniel and Randle. He'll be the 27th wide
receiver enshrined at the museum in
Canton
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Del Zotto Jersey , Ohio. That's a three-hour drive from his hometown, but
it's sure a long way from poverty-ridden Rand where Moss and his sports-loving
friends played football as frequently as they could in the heart of coal country
next to the Allegheny Mountains just south of the capital city, Charleston.
"It was something that just felt good. I loved to compete. I just loved going out there just doing what kids do, just getting dirty," Moss said.
He landed at Marshall University after some off-the-field trouble kept him out of Florida State and Notre Dame, and he took the Thundering Herd to what was
then the NCAA Division I-AA national championship in 1996. Several NFL teams
remained wary of his past, but Vikings head coach Dennis Green didn't flinch
when Moss was still on the board in the 1998 draft with the 21st overall pick.
Moss never forgot the teams that passed on him, with especially punishing
performances against Dallas, Detroit and Green Bay.
"I just carried a certain chip on my shoulder because the way I grew up playing was just basically having a tough mentality," Moss said. "Crying,
hurting, in pain? So what? Get up, and let's go."
The Vikings finished 15-1 in 1998, infamously missing the Super Bowl by a field goal. The next draft, the Packers took cornerbacks with their first three
picks.
Moss never escaped his reputation as a moody player whose behavior and effort were often questioned. That led to his first departure from Minnesota, via trade
to Oakland in 2005.
The Raiders dealt him to New England in 2007, when the Patriots became the first 16-0 team before losing in the Super Bowl, to the New York Giants.
After a rocky 2010 for Moss
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by the Vikings, he took a year off. He returned in 2012 to reach one more Super
Bowl with the San Francisco 49ers.
Moss was not a particularly physical player, but for his lanky frame he had plenty of strength. His combination of height and speed was exceptional, and his
instincts for the game were too.
Carter taught him how to watch the video board at the Metrodome to find the ball in the air, and he had a knack for keeping his hands close enough to his
body that if the defensive back in coverage had his back to the quarterback he
couldn't tell when the ball was about to arrive.
In an NFL Films clip that captured a sideline conversation between him and Cunningham during one game, Moss yelled, "Throw it up above his head! They can't
jump with me! Golly!"
For Vikings wide receiver Adam Thielen, who has lived his entire life in Minnesota, was a sports-loving 8-year-old in 1998 when Moss helped lead the
Vikings to what was then the NFL season scoring record with 556 points. The
first team to break it was New England in 2007 with, again, Moss as the premier
pass-catcher who set the all-time record that year with 23 touchdown
catches.
"It's fun to look back at his career and watch his old film. I love when that stuff pops up on Instagram, to be able to watch some of those old Randy plays
that made me want to play this game," Thielen said. "I try to emulate him as
much as I can."
Winning a Stanley Cup takes an army. It?? a long and grueling season, requiring the cumulative efforts of many to ensure success. And when all is said
and done, only one team gets to hoist the Stanley Cup, while the remaining teams
look for silver linings in an otherwise failure of a season. A harsh reality,
but that?? how most hockey players will describe life in the NHL ---
If you??e not first, you??e last! ??Ricky Bobby
Luke
Schenn Jersey Kids , Sporting Icon ---
Much of a team?? success often goes to its best players, the coach, and the goalie. If you??e best players don?? perform, success is often hard to come by.
If the coach isn?? respected, players don?? try, and if your goalie can?? stop
pucks, do I really need to explain what happens then? Teams that have sustained
success can do so in a variety of ways, but one thing most of them have in
common is quality leadership on and off the ice. That leadership, some will say,
is the collective responsibility of all players and while that may be true, most
of the burden falls on the coach and captain of the team. The captain is the
coach on the ice. He?? the ombudsperson for the team. Everybody loves chatting
when things are going well, but when s*it hits the fan, who has to face the
music and explain just
WTF is going on?...the guy wearing the ????(and the coach). A captain must have the respect of all their teammates, and the
coach must have the respect of his captain. If any of those links are broken,
problems can occur and manifest into larger locker room problems
[u]quickly[/u].
On that note, let?? take a look at 8 NHL teams whose captains have essentially lost the locker room and potential [u]same-team[/u] replacements for each.
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