How Good Is Randy Moss (from 2008)

I've always been a big fan of Randy Moss - going all the way back to watching the highlights of him sprinting through D1-AA defenses with those green and white striped Marshall socks. Then I started thinking about all of the facts about Randy Moss and how good he has been throughout his career - except for that brief stint in Oakland.
(Sidebar - doesn't it almost seem like the stint in Oakland should be able to be edited out of his resume? I mean, if you can find a way to put Animal House on TBS, there has to be a way to not allow that period onto his profile. It's almost like he was blackout drunk at a frat party......he just wasn't himself.)

Here are some facts to chew on:

• Moss has 124 TDs in 10 years. That's more than halfway to Jerry Rice's record of 197. Moss probably won't play 20 years (and to be fair, Rice had 131 after 10 years. But....we're talking about Jerry Rice here)
• Moss has 12,193 yards. Hall of Famer Michael Irvin had 11,904 in his 12 year career. Oh...and Irvin had 65 TDs......just over half of Moss's total.
• Most WRs blossom in their 3rd year and look completely lost as rookies. In his rookie season, Moss had 1,300 yards and 17 TDs. Rice had 900 yards and 3 TDs. Irvin 650/5; Harrison 800/8; Chad Johnson 300/1.
  
• The only rookie who came close in recent years was, believe it or not, Terry Glenn with 1100 yards and 6 TDs.
• In 1999, after getting absolutely torched by Moss in 1998 (his rookie year) the Green Bay Packers selected defensive backs in the 1st 3 rounds and another in the 7th. Think about that, they went into the 1999 draft with the specific intention of finding a way to stop Randy Moss - who was a rookie the year before!!!!!

Probably the most impressive piece of his resume is how much better he made each of his quarterbacks. In hindsight, Brady's incredible season seemed almost inevitable when you combined one of the best QBs of all time with Moss' obscene talents. Here's a comparison of each of Moss' QBs throughout his career and their average stats with him and without him.
(Sidebar - I omitted the Raider years. It's my blog and, if The Sopranos can be on A & E, than I can edit the stats for my blog.)


Let's go in chronological order starting with Randall Cunningham.
(Sidebar - by the way, can anyone have lucked into a better situation than Randall did in 1998. He was out of the league in 1996 and the MIN backup in 1997. Then in 1998 Brad Johnson gets hurt and Randall comes in and, 10 times per game, he closes his eyes and throws the ball about a mile in the air - to nobody in particular - and Moss would casually sprint to where the ball was going, jump higher than anyone else, and Cunningham gets an All Pro year out of it. At the age of 35 and 6 years removed from his prime. I hope he bought Moss a nice Xmas gift that year.)