In 1998, then-rookie Randy Moss nonchalantly vowed to come to the NFL and “rip it up.” And he did.
Now, a season after retiring, Moss has made a more colorful promise. “I’m coming to tear somebody’s heads off, man,” Moss said in a compelling Monday night video session on Ustream, roughly 12 hours after using the technology to announce his return to football.
He dubs his casual laptop encounters with fans “Moss TV,” and he says he won’t be doing anything with the media. “I don’t wanna be on nobody’s radio, I don’t wanna be on nobody’s newspaper,” Moss said. “This is Moss TV, this is gonna continue to be Moss TV.”
He says he’s “fully committed” to playing, that he’s “still got it,” that he can indeed still run a 4.3 in the 40, but that he doesn’t need to be the No. 1 receiver on his next team.
“I got something on my shoulder and it’s a chip that I need to get it off,” Moss said.
Though earlier in the day he seemed to be willing to play for any team that is willing to have him, Moss hinted that he wants a team that will compete, and that is “missing a piece here and there.”
He said wants to win a Super Bowl; he said his socks got sweaty from nerves as he was rooting for the Patriots to beat the Giants in Super Bowl XLVI.
Moss candidly admitted to a variety of regrets. “I got regrets of how I left New England, I got regrets of how I left Minnesota, and I got regrets of how I retired,” Moss said. But he said “I doubt that” in response to a viewer who asked if he’d play again for the Vikings. Moss also laughed at a viewer comment warning him not to play for the Browns because former Vikings coach Brad Childress now works there. (Moss also said he won’t tell the story about what really happened in Minnesota, and that he’s saving it for the book.)
Above all else, Moss was funny and engaging. Someone asked him, “How smelly are your poops?” He responded by explaining that when he was a kid he didn’t think guys like Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan pooped or wiped their noses.
And then Moss picked his own nose on camera.
Though the online antics won’t make him any more attractive to his next team, his return to the limelight -- and his genuine, child-like fascination with having 500-plus viewers and a rapid-fire stream of questions -- is fun to watch.
He says he’ll fire up “Moss TV” again tomorrow, or the next day. Or maybe the next day. When it happens, we’ll post a head’s up and a link on the PFT Twitter page.