Wide receiver Randy Moss is heading back to the place where his career began. The New England Patriots are close to completing a trade with the Minnesota Vikings to send the dynamic receiver back to the team that made him a first round draft pick back in 1998. As compensation, the Patriots will receive the Vikings third round pick in the 2011 draft.
The trade comes after the Boston Herald reported on Tuesday that Moss wanted out of New England after their week 1 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. Moss has not kept his feelings a secret so far this season, citing on multiple occasions that he didn’t see himself in New England past this year and voicing his feelings of not being wanted. Before the season began, Moss said “When you have done so much and put so much work in, it kind of feels like I am not wanted.”
Moss did not have a catch in the most recent Patriots win over Miami, his first game as a Patriot without a catch. For the season, he has nine catches for 139 yards and three TDs.
The Vikings have been searching for a deep threat for Brett Favre all season since the injury to WR Sidney Rice, and after failing to land Chargers WR Vincent Jackson, turned their attention to the former Viking WR Moss. The move should help QB Brett Favre, who lobbied hard to the Green Bay Packers to trade for Moss back in 2007, his last year with the Packers.
The deal was first broken by FoxSports.com.
I can’t figure out the motivation for this trade. I don’t necessarily have a problem with moving Moss. I think the Patriots know that they aren’t good enough to win a super bowl with their defense in 2010. But was a third round pick the best they could get? They likely would have gotten a third round compensatory pick in 2012 for his departure anyways. All they do with this trade is move that pick up a year. My hunch here is that there is more to this situation than we know. I think details are going to leak sometime this week that Moss’s situation was a problem for a few weeks, and that Monday night’s performance was the boiling point. Stay tuned. This story isn’t even close to being over.
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