Flashback

Moss reminds ex-Cowboy Irvin of his own troubled youth

SEATTLE -- The first player I thought of the other day after the Randy Moss traffic incident was Michael Irvin. Not because Irvin in his youth stepped over the line as often as the young Moss has so far in his young life -- but because Irvin stepped over the line so frequently as his career died.

Terrific and cocky receivers. Never thought they were covered. Thought the rules were for others. Thought, in football and in life, it's only a penalty if you get caught.

Then I saw Irvin, who is making something of himself now as a TV guy on the immature Best Damn Sports Show Period on Fox, talk about the Moss story Thursday. Irvin said something eminently sensible: Whereas he always lived in fear of coach Jimmy Johnson when he played fast and loose for the University of Miami and later the Cowboys, he said Moss has no one to fear.

Why be afraid of the past enablers in the Vikings organization, and why be afraid of current coach Mike Tice? No one's given Moss reason to fear anything. (Though I think Tice, if push comes to show, will put his foot on Moss' throat.)

1. Oakland (3-0). I'm not saying anything bad about Charles Woodson, but I am saying that Phillip Buchanon is one heck of an understudy. The Miami kid's 83-yard punt return for a TD is just the beginning of a great career.  2. Denver (3-0). Sic 'em tonight, Brian Griese! Play unleashed!  3. New England (3-1). No Troy Brown? Fine. Tom Brady will go to Vrabel.  4. San Diego (4-0). I now officially eat my words, John Butler: You did a good deal trading Michael Vick, in effect, for Drew Brees and LaDainian Tomlinson prior to the draft last year. A heck of a deal, really. Those two guys just beat the Super Bowl champs.  5. Philadelphia (3-1). Was that a bye yesterday, or just the Texans?  6. Miami (3-1). I am going to be very charitable and give the Wannstedtmen their one mulligan for the year. Hey, 48 points can happen to the best of defenses, can't it? It can't?  7. New Orleans (3-1). Ditto.  8. San Francisco (2-1). On their bye Sunday, Terrell Owens and Steve Mariucci went to Peet's in Berkeley, got two lattes, talked for 10 or so minutes peacefully, then, unexpectedly, Owens stood up, threw the tepid latte in Mooch's lap, watched as Mooch did nothing but reach for a napkin, then screamed at the coach: "See? Just like I said last week: You lack the killer instinct!"  9. Tampa Bay (3-1). Yell, Keyshawn, yell.  10. Buffalo (2-2). You don't want to be on the Bills' schedule right now, and certainly not as they get better this season. Oakland-Buffalo next week is suddenly a terrific game.  11. Green Bay (3-1). Why don't I trust these guys?  12. (tie) Chicago (2-2). The .500 team that nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to play.   12. (tie) Jacksonville (2-1). I can't believe I am writing this. That Taylormack guy is one heck of a back.

And so I called Irvin in Los Angeles. He thought it was eerie that I did.

"I called Randy after it happened, just to reach out," Irvin said softly."I told him: 'I'm praying for you. I'm here if you need me.'"

He paused. "Man, I've been in that place, the desperate place. I've walked that road. I feel for him. And when I saw him cry in that interview [with ESPN's Andrea Kremer], I knew this thing had seriously gotten to him. If he cries and makes a show of it for the cameras, I'd think it's phony. But he kept trying to hide his tears. He was embarrassed. He tried to mask it. That was real, man.

"You know, Moss comes from nothing. I came from nothing. We both fought our way to the top. I once was told I was always at my best in a scrape, when times were bad. Same with Randy, it seems."

Irvin thinks the biggest difference between him at 25 and Moss at the same age was the man who lorded over him. Bill Parcells always said that above all other factors that make a coach effective is this one: the ability to make players fear you, or fear for their jobs. "Fear" might not be exactly the right word. But players need to know there's a consequence to everything they do, and they need to know that the authority and tough love once doled out by the mother/father/teacher/mentor they had as kids now comes from one person: the head coach. That's the effect Johnson had on the Dallas Cowboys.

Once, the day before the Cowboys left Dallas for one of their Super Bowls under Johnson, defensive tackle Chad Hennings had his Super Bowl tickets swiped from his locker. Johnson found out and gave his team this speech: "If the person who did this does not come forward with the tickets by breakfast tomorrow, I will find out who it is. I will cut his sorry ass. Then I will call every coach in the National Football League and tell each one of them to never, ever, ever hire this sorry SOB because he is a no-good rotten turncoat who steals from his teammates."

The tickets were in the team security chief's hands the next morning at 6:30.

"I was afraid of disappointing Jimmy, even in the offseason" Irvin said. "I'd see him when we were supposed to be off, and he'd tell me, 'You gettin' your work done? I'm counting on you.' I think a team needs that. Tice is trying to do it with Randy. He's trying to build that relationship. But it's not there yet."

When Irvin watched the story of Moss and the traffic officer unfold last week, he could feel it being blown out of proportion. But that's life for famous people who've had a history of screwing up. "I'm saying, 'C'mon, Randy!' He knows everything he does is gonna get magnified. That's why he can't put himself in those situations."

He really wants to talk to Moss. First, because Irvin says he has become a spiritual person during the last couple of years, he would try to get Moss to pray with him. But it's also because he thinks he's walked in Moss' shoes.

"I have been exactly where he is," Irvin said. "I've felt the same way -- I won't bow down to you, man. And you know how when you're young and going through something, and someone older tries to help you, you think they don't know anything? Well, I think I've been there. And I think I could help him. I know he's not a bad kid. I hope he calls."

OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK

Buffalo QB Drew Bledsoe, who is not only my offensive player of the week but the player of the month. What he means to Buffalo can be summed up in one drive. Fourth quarter, first and 10 on his own 22, 12 minutes left, 20-20 tie with Chicago, five total yards for the Bills in the second half. Bing, bang, zoom. Four passes, four completions, 52 yards, the last of which was a 1-yard, perfectly executed play-action strike to tight end Dave Moore for a touchdown against a supremely fooled Chicago defense. Then, in overtime, with the crowd chanting "Drewwwwwwwwww," he threw two passes in a two-play, 56-yard drive to win it. What a performance (28-36, 328 yards, four touchdown passes, no picks). Through four games, he has completed 70.3 percent of his throws for 1,345 yards -- and is on pace for a 5,380-yard season. The record, by the way, is 5,084. The man is reborn.

DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK

San Diego LB Junior Seau. This is a team award, really, with Seau leading the way after a nine-tackle afternoon in the 21-14 win over New England. When he tripped up Antowain Smith in the backfield on Patriots' last real shot of the day, Seau symbolized what this defense has done in the first four games (38 points allowed, a league low), holding a terrific offense to two touchdowns while harassing Brady all afternoon.

SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK

Chicago T "Big Cat" Williams. At 6-foot-7 and 331 pounds -- not to mention 32 years old -- you wouldn't expect Williams to be in the middle of the field-goal block team. But there he was, with 32 seconds left, in the center of the line, with Buffalo's Mike Hollis lined up for the game-winning field goal, and the kick going straight and true, and Williams sticking that big taped right paw into the sky. Williams' deflection sent the game into overtime. Not his fault the Bears defense couldn't buck the almighty force that, these days, is Bledsoe. This was the ninth field-goal block of the big man's career, by the way.

COACH OF THE WEEK

Kansas City coach Dick Vermeil. You just can't stick a fork in his teams. In the span of eight days, he has taken the Super Bowl champs to the limit, as the Chiefs scored 14 points in the last five minutes before losing in overtime at New England 41-38. Then his Chiefs overwhelmed the league's second-, third- or fourth-best team (take your pick), Miami, with another offensive blitz. Vermeil's new team has outscored his supposedly prolific old one, the Rams, 142-61.

GOAT OF THE WEEK

The New York Jets. I can't isolate one person. From the owner to the GM to the coach to the coordinators to the stars to the schmoes to the janitor, this is the most disappointing team in the AFC through September. Struggling is one thing. Getting blown out 102-13 in the past three games is another. Losing by 37, 27 and 25 ... I mean, this is stuff of the '76 Bucs. Or the '01 Lions.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"He is falling into the role of a classic coach-breaker. The only question I ask is why did God, in his infinite wisdom, choose a jerk like this on whom to bestow such remarkable physical prowess?"
-- SI's Paul Zimmerman on Moss, in an online piece for CNNSI.com.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK II

"One of the great things about being in Paris is no one cares about the Lions."
-- Lions CEO Bill Ford Jr., the auto executive, speaking on a Detroit talk show from an auto show in France.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK III

"Everybody makes mistakes, but unfortunately, here in Pittsburgh, the quarterback is the guy who gets the blame all the time."
-- On-the-verge-of-being-benched Pittsburgh QB Kordell Stewart before Sunday's 16-13 overtime win over Cleveland. He was indeed benched, and Tommy Maddox led the way to the victory.

When young football and basketball lover Chris Carter was growing up in Middletown, Ohio, a rookie receiver burst onto the scene in nearby Cincinnati for the Bengals. Went by the name of Cris Collinsworth. Young Chris thought: I love the way he plays, and I love the way he spells his name. Against his Mom's wishes, Chris Carter became Cris Carter. Not officially; he never changed the name legally. But he began spelling his name "Cris" in school, and this is the way he spelled his name throughout high school, college and pro football.

When his mother wraps his Christmas gift, she still puts "Chris" on the tag. When he signs his income tax return, it's still "Chris."

And now Cris Squared spend every Thursday together in New York, in meetings and on the set of HBO's Inside the NFL show.

I have determined that the worst thing about travel in the United States is the unavoidable problem of listening to loud cell phone conversations. Last Tuesday, I ventured to Washington to interview Arizona Sen. John McCain for a television story I'm doing for HBO, then to Baltimore to speak with Ray Lewis. On the way home, on my beloved Acela Express, these were the cell phone conversations I heard from seats near mine as northern Maryland begat Delaware:

Man, audible enough to be heard in the seven seats closest to him: "Hello? Yeah. I just wanted to check in with you, to see if you knew I was coming in tonight. ... I was at the Monkey Bar the other night. I said to Mike: 'This place is terrible! I gotta get you in some place that's decent!' ... The lyrics were unbelievable! Completely out of bounds! He is not stable. Not stable! Ha ha ha ha ha! ... No, tonight, I'm staying in when I get to New York. I'm sticking close to the vest. ... You're going to have to be wild enough for both of us tonight! ... Come on, it's a Tuesday! Who goes brewski-hopping on Tuesdays? Ha ha ha ha!"

Woman, audible for the nine people closest to her: "Amanda? ... Mom. ... You did? You did! Wow! I am very proud of you. Thrilled for you! ... How's she doing? ... Does she? ... Uh-huh. ... OK. ... Good. ... Do you have a lot of homework? ... What are you doing for dinner tonight? ... How's my little baby Jasper? Did you take her outside to do pee-pee? And number two? ... You are such a good girl! ... Does your Daddy want to talk to me? ... The toilet overflowed. ... Yeah. ... Have you checked online? ... OK. I'll be home late tonight. I love you."

I long for the days when people devoured the Washington Post on the Acela.

You mean those days never existed?

1. I think you can stick a fork in the Rams. They can't go 10-2 down the stretch and make the playoffs. Not with the 49ers on the road next week, not with Jamie Martin playing quarterback, not with a sieve of an offensive line, not with Marshall Faulk running as productively as Ron Dayne. That offensive line looks like the big problem to me, folks. Well, no Kurt Warner looks like more of a problem this morning, really.

2. I think these are my quick-hit football thoughts of the weekend:

a. I'm no Hedda Hopper, but I feel it's my duty as your public servant to inform you that the Boston Herald has reported Tom Brady and Van Wilder vixen Tara Reid were seen canoodling in a Boston nightclub recently.

b. Heck of a job by Kremer with Moss. Good job by Chris Mortensen on Sunday, too, on Moss being in the substance-abuse program.

c. Re: Moss' someone-left-it-in-my-car-and-it-wasn't-me reefer excuse: Has anyone in the history of man ever been caught with pot, then said: "Yeah, that's mine, officer."?

d. I told you about the Bills. They're going to be in this thing in December. Gregg Williams is doing a heck of a job Scotch-taping a pretty limited defense together.

e. Leftover favorite line from Vikings special-teamer Harold Morrow from an e-mail exchange in my Sports Illustrated magazine column. I asked him what hurts when he wakes up Monday morning. "My shoulders hurt so much in the morning I can't wait to get to the sauna to warm them up. After that I have to get in the cold tub -- 49 degrees -- for 20 minutes to numb my legs because my hamstrings feel like I've been pulling a truck all night. Then I have weighlifting. That's every week. That's what this job is."

f. The Raiders were up on the Titans 21-0 after six minutes -- and one offensive snap -- Sunday.

g. I have one word for the Seahawks uniforms: hideous.

h. I have one word for the Bengals: hideous. I mean, they're 0-4. Their average margin of defeat is 24 points. In the course of one month, they've already had three quarterbacks beaten into submission. Who's next? Turk Schonert? John Stofa?

i. Tony Gonzalez can play for my team any day. He is the Kellen Winslow of today.

j. Wow. Was Mike Sherman mad in the Packers-Panthers game or what? Incredible anger there, more than I've seen from a coach in a long time.

k. That's a can of worms you opened there, Tommy Maddox.

3. I think it's absolutely pathetic if Mike Brown reports to work this morning and doesn't say: "People, we've got to think about a real, live, honest-to-goodness general manager to get us out of this funk." One suggestion, Mike: Scott Pioli. Bill Belichick's right-hand man might even be able to do the impossible, which is to build a 9-7 team.

4. I think the Raiders look absolutely scary right now. The crazy thing is, you've got to be 34 to make that team, don't you?

5. I think these are my personal thoughts of the week:

a. I never thought I would read the following sentences in the New York Times. And I don't think the people who run the New York Times thought they'd ever run a review like this one last week, about a concert featuring the rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony: "Many of the songs described a hazy, paranoid world where everyone smokes marijuana and sells cocaine. ... Throughout the set there were signs of trouble. Bizzy Bone was dividing his time between a microphone and a flask, and as the concert progressed, he paid less and less attention to the microphone. He slumped over on the side of the stage and then, right before Notorious Thugs, he staggered off. The group carried on without him. ... Afterward they said Bizzy Bone was no longer a member of the group. 'You saw him, all drunk and passed out,' Layzie Bone said. 'He didn't even make it through the show.' Krayzie Bone explained that the group had been having trouble with Bizzy, and Krayzie vowed that Bizzy's ouster wouldn't derail the rest of the tour, or the group's forthcoming album."

b. Speaking of tidbits you did not need to know, Us Magazine reports that Anna Nicole Smith's dog is on Prozac.

c. I mean, if you were Anna Nicole Smith's dog, wouldn't you need an anti-depressant?

d. I like the fact that Chelsea Clinton lives in Chelsea. The Manhattan neighborhood of Chelsea.

e. Coffeenerdness: I have died and gone to press box heaven. Here at Seahawks Stadium is the first-ever espresso stand in the press box lounge. It's run by Seattle's Best Coffee, and they deserve that shameless plug for the two excellent mochas I had last night, one pregame and one in the third quarter. Don't tell SI, but I'm applying for the Seahawks beat job at the Post-Intelligencer this offseason, just because of the free lattes.

f. I already miss the baseball season. I love meaningless September games.

g. Suburban League rotisserie update update: THE RED SOX WIN THE PENNANT! THE RED SOX WIN THE PENNANT! THE RED SOX WIN THE PENNANT! The Montclair Red Sox, that is. Yours truly clinched it this past weekend with a performance I've been waiting for for two months from Brian Giles (five runs, six RBIs, two jacks at Chicago Friday). I actually won rather handily, thanks to some strong pitching (Zito, Lowe, Wade Miller, Gagne, Sasaki, Dotel), some consistent jacking (Jim Thome) and just enough from Chipper Jones, Nomar, Garret Anderson and Giles. I really admire Anderson. Just a very good, steady everyday player, one of the best in baseball over the last four or five years, though no one really knows it. I still have no idea what happened to Ichiro, who stopped hitting and running somewhere around the middle of July. I am giving my winner's share (somewhere around $900) to my wife, who put up with my baseballaholicness all spring and summer, and I'm going to say to her: Take this and do something you want with it. I just wanted to win this league, sick man that I am. I guess we all have competitive joneses to sate.

h. Montclair (N.J.) High Field Hockey Note of the Week: The facts first. The girls won at previously undefeated Hillsborough, 2-0, last Monday, and the reward was entering the (Newark) Star-Ledger's Field Hockey Top 20 for the first time this season. (MHS was ranked 20th when Wednesday's ratings were published.) On a soggy home pitch Saturday, MHS held off perennial North Jersey Field Hockey League power Pompton Lakes, 1-0, on a perfectly executed corner; senior captain Lyndsay Wilson passed out to junior Mary Beth King at the point, and My Favorite Field Hockey Player dished to senior inner Margot Vreeland, who quickly slapped a liner into the back of the cage. MHS exits September 6-0-0, and the Mounties haven't allowed a goal. What I wanted to explain was how we played at Hillsborough. Have you seen, in sports, how sometimes a team is confronted with some kind of challenge and plays a little better than it really might be? Well, Hillsborough was a strong team, a fast team, and it looked as though our girls realized, after five minutes or so, "Hey, these guys are really good, and we'd better elevate our game," and we just played great. Mary Beth looked five percent faster than I thought she was. Just interesting to see kids rise to the occasion when it really counts.

i. Montclair Field Hockey Player of the Week: Senior goalie Allie Klein, who made at least five tough saves at Hillsborough, and was a wall again Saturday. She was interviewed by MMQB exclusively on Saturday.

MMQB: What do you do the night before a game?

Klein: I get nervous. I don't go out much the night before a game. Have dinner. Go to sleep relatively early.

MMQB: You never played much before this year. How have you risen to the occasion so well?

Klein: In the beginning of the year, I had never really proven to myself that I could be good. All I knew was that our goalies in the past had really been strong, and I didn't think I could measure up. Then I finally got challenged, and I stepped up and I proved to myself I could do it.

MMQB: You haven't allowed a goal yet.

Klein: On one hand, it's really exciting. I can have fun thinking, 'What happens if I don't give up a goal the whole season?' That's almost too much pressure.

MMQB: The girls in front of you are taking a lot of the pressure off you, aren't they?

Klein: Eva has been the amazing player. Chelsea, Jacqueline and Courtney, doing as much work as they did in the offseason, have played amazing. And Laura is playing out of her mind! She is phenomenal! Her stick work is so good.

MMQB: Has field hockey given you a lot of confidence?

Klein: I never thought of myself as an athlete. I played softball in the rec league in Montclair for five years and never won a single game. I didn't think of it as I was bad until my father, at my bat mitzvah, said, 'Well, softball wasn't your sport.' And I thought: 'Oh my God, I am horrible!' Anyway, I sort of proved to myself I can be an athlete, which is pretty exciting. It's such a great game. It's shown me that I can be an athlete if I step up to something and really try my hardest.

MMQB: What's your favorite TV show?

Klein: I don't watch TV. For me, it's practice, dance class, eat dinner, homework, go to sleep as soon as possible. I used to be obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though.

MMQB: Do you have any pets?

Klein: A bouvier named Sasha. That's a Belgian herding dog. She's enormous! She's a small bear! But she ate a stick of butter yesterday, so she's quarantined today.

MMQB: You like music. What are the best concerts you've ever seen?

Klein: Dispatch; three guys who went to Middlebury. Pretty eclectic, jazzy rocky, reggae. Then the Dave Matthews Band at Giants Stadium. Awful night. It started hailing. Then Matchbox 20 at Madison Square Garden. And I'm not ashamed to say the Backstreet Boys freshman year. I think being a teenybopper is totally cool.

MMQB: Do you have anything controversial you'd like to say?

Klein: Let me think. ... I think George W. Bush is an idiot. He said we'd find Osama bin Laden. Show me Osama bin Laden! I don't see Osama bin Laden.

j. Montclair Field Hockey/NFL Factoid of the Week: The Chunky Soup commercial with Brian Urlacher and his mother -- where Urlacher plays "Duck, Duck Goose" in a little kid's classroom -- was filmed earlier this year at Watchung School in Montclair, N.J. ... right across the street from the Montclair High School field hockey pitch.

6. I think Paul Allen has built himself a heck of a stadium here. He left open half of the north end zone with a weird, narrow, curved set of tall stands so the fans could see downtown Seattle from most places in the stadium. I may feel differently on a rainy day, but Sunday night was pleasant, with slivers of sun coloring the place, and so I'm pleased there's no dome or retractable roof. Wide concourses, good food areas, tons of microbrews. Right across the street from Safeco. The only city in America now with a better football-baseball stadia situation is Denver, where Coors Field and Invesco are both beyond gorgeous. Safeco and Seahawks are close.

7a. I think the Minnesota defensive players should band together, walk into Tice's office this morning as a group, and say, "Don't pay us this week. We stink." What a horrendous show by those guys.

8. I think these are my baseball awards, which I will compare to Tom Verducci's in SI this week:

AL MVP -- Oakland SS Miguel Tejada. (Verducci: Alfonso Soriano.) The A's won 100 last year, lost their best player, Jason Giambi, to the Yankees, and won 100 again this year. Every time I looked up in the past month there was Tejada with a big hit. A-Rod? Not his fault, but the Rangers dropped out of the pennant race around April 25. He played five months of stat games. But Tejada has been in gut-check games every night for the past six months and responded with Oakland's first 200-hit season, 34 homers, 131 RBIs and play after play at short.

AL Cy Young -- Oakland SP Barry Zito. (Verducci: Martinez.) I really respect Verducci's arguments for Pedro, my favorite pitcher of all time. But I come back to this: From mid-August through a week and a half ago, every game Zito pitched was was crucial to the A's playoff hopes. He went 7-0 in that stretch, with an ERA of 1.83, and his team won all eight games he started. And 23-5, no matter what kind of run support you get, is still 23-5, the best record in baseball this year. Zito had the most wins by an American League lefty since 1988.

NL MVP -- San Francisco OF Barry Bonds. (Verducci: Bonds.) There should be as much discussion about this as there was in the room when Joe Montana's name came up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame vote a few Januaries ago.

NL Cy Young -- Arizona SP Randy Johnson. (Verducci: Johnson.) Piece of cake. Tough luck for Curt Schilling to be the Drysdale to this longer-running Koufax.

9a. I think one of the happiest guys I've talked to in a long time was Dave McGinnis, whom I spent some cell phone time with Sunday night after his 21-7 win over the Giants. "[Sunday] night," he said, "we had a very emotional team meeting. I had to convince these guys they're still a good team after all the negativity floating around with our loss last week. God, I'm so proud of those guys. What a great group of guys." Sometimes, I think this very, very good coach should be coaching in high school -- and I mean that as a compliment.

9b. McGinnis asked me: "How's the field hockey team doing? Tell Mary Beth that Coach Mac says go get 'em."

10. I think I have the ultimate reason why the NFL is so interesting. The two teams favored to reach the Super Bowl in most Las Vegas books, St. Louis and Pittsburgh, are 1-6 this morning. Two of the bottom quadrant of teams in Vegas' preseason eyes, Carolina and San Diego, are 7-1.

That's also the reason, by the way, that you should never, ever, ever bet on the NFL game.

Don't make me laugh, Baltimoreans. Denver. By 20. The only way the bye week benefited the Ravens is that it let Brian Billick drop his daughter off at college (Northwestern) without disrupting his professional life. Northwestern has three shorter terms, which means the students go short in the fall and long in the winter and spring.

And I will leave you with this: The other day, I was with Ray Lewis. His cell phone rang. He held up the front of the phone, which ID's the incoming caller. "SHANNON," it read. Turns out Mr. Sharpe, the former Raven and now a Bronco again, wanted his mom to sit in Ray's 26-seat box. No problem, Ray said; she's in. That bit of niceness, however, will not help Sharpe tonight if he goes across the middle. I feel quite certain that Lewis will knock his buddy's block off, even though that won't matter much in the final score. If Griese lights it up tonight, by the way, he'll be my Alpo Player of the Week.

Oh. That was rrrufff.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Peter can also be seen each week on HBO's Inside the NFL. Monday Morning Quarterback appears in this space -- no kidding -- on Monday mornings.

 

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