Last year, when Randy Moss was retired and opted to take to the Internet to declare out of the blue (moon) his desire to return to football, the notion that Moss would be competing once again for his first Super Bowl ring would have been unfathomable.
But Moss picked the 49ers, where the future Hall of Famer has become a secondary player on the brand-new NFC champion. In 16 regular-season games (with two starts), he had only 28 catches for 434 yards and three touchdowns. And in a pair of playoff games, Moss has five total catches for 71 yards and no scores.
Moss didn’t do much on Sunday, but the end result -- a win over the top-seeded Falcons on their home field -- had to go a long way toward exorcising the demons that doomed his historic rookie season, when the Falcons knocked off the top-seeded Vikings on their home field.
Now, his memories will shift to 2007, and the game that capped another historic season. The last time Moss played in the Super Bowl (with the Patriots, who scored only 14 points against the Giants), he had put together one of the greatest seasons of all time for a receiver, with a league-record 23 touchdown receptions. This time around, with 20 fewer touchdowns, he has perhaps his last chance to emerge with a ring.
Over the next 13 days, Raven linebacker Ray Lewis will be absorbing plenty of attention for his effort to strut into the sunset with a Super Bowl trophy, like John Elway, Jerome Bettis, and Michael Strahan. But let’s not forget that the guy who could actually be capping his career by rubbing his butt against the Lombardi is Randy Moss.