The rift between Moss and the Patriots’ front office must have been too much to bear, and the decision makers exiled one of the greatest wide receivers in NFL history. And for what? A third-round pick in a draft with questionable third-round talent.
If it’s about business, and the Patriots are thinking moves ahead of everyone else, they’ll have an opportunity to go big in the 2011 draft with two picks in each of the first four rounds. In the event that they break their recent track record, they Patriots would be in excellent position to pull off a few trades to keep moving up in the draft to target impact players.
For some reason, though, that just doesn’t seem like the driving force behind the Patriots’ motive to trade Moss, who became a headache for the front office when he went on a me-first campaign for several days after New England’s season-opening victory against Cincinnati. And if the Patriots were ticked off about that, there’s no one who can blame them.
But when a conflict of interest leads to an in-season trade, it screams of the Patriots taking this one step too far. They were likely going to let him walk in free agency, but what was the rush to simply get something for him in advance? If the Patriots’ offense fails to quickly adjust without Moss, or it sputters late in the regular season or in the playoffs, they’ll wonder “what if” like they did in 2006 without Deion Branch, 2008 without Asante Samuel and 2009 without Richard Seymour.
And quite honestly, those 2010 “what ifs” could still include Seymour and Logan Mankins — both of whom are not with the team due to personal conflicts that spread too far over into the business side of the game.
The players will notice this, too. They’ve all got Moss’ back, and he has been the same great teammate this season that they’ve all grown to love. While they were aware of the mutual beef between Moss and the front office, Moss was still cool with the guys in the locker room, and this exiling could cause some type of resentment from his now-former teammates.
There is also the notion that the timing of the trade worked in the Patriots’ favor because they’re at the start of their bye week, but look at it from the other angle. The players are still riding high after a huge win in Miami, and they’re 3-1 and tied with the Jets (yes, they’d lose the tiebreaker if the season ended right now) and in good position going forward.
That’s not something they think should be messed with, and if anything, players always want more talent coming in to help them out. There’s just no chance they’ll be thrilled about this move. In their minds, they don’t know if they’ll even be around by the time this third-round pick starts helping the Patriots. And, considering their five third-round picks since 2008 — quarterback Kevin O’Connell, linebacker Shawn Crable, wide receiver Brandon Tate, linebacker Tyrone McKenzie and wide receiver Taylor Price — have played in nine total games for the Patriots to this point, the current crop of Pats have another legitimate gripe to that point.
When the Patriots get back to work Thursday, they’ll likely preach the company line about the business side of football and the unpredictability that it causes. But in the back of their minds, they’ll know it was personal.
