Moss a make-or-break move for Patriots

Forget the fall of Quinn, the most memorable moment of the 2007 NFL Draft was the trade of Randy Moss from Oakland to New England. Moss, formerly of the Vikings as well, was twice a Pirate and is now a Patriot.

As the most gifted athlete ever to play the wide receiver position and as possibly the most gifted athlete ever to play American football (this side of Deion and Bo, naturally) and as certainly one of the most gifted athletes America has ever seen, Moss takes his mercurial, yet of late languishing talents from the West Coast to the East Coast in the hope of reinvigorating his career and getting a ring. In doing so, the problem child of the NFL before Terrell Owens took center stage joins the team renowned for its patented and paraded gold standard for sportsmanship, teamwork and humility.

But can Moss, who made sense on the fields of underachieving teams and as an entertainer of men wearing armor and helmets with horns, become a Patriot? Can he embrace the team concept and decide, contrary to the comments he made in one State of the Randy Address a few years back, to play hard every down?

The answer is .... well, there is no answer. Too much of sports coverage is devoted to prediction, and many people, perhaps not irrationally, feel that such speculation is pointless. I don't know what is going to happen to Moss in New England, and neither does anyone else. What I do know is that the proverbial camel's back has been broken, and the Patriots have finally joined the rest of the league as just another team, albeit a very good team, run by a cabal of smart people.

The process of the Patriots becoming just another team is really about public perception. Under coach Bill Belichick, the team has seemingly been a class act, and that they play in New England and are Boston's football team only intensified the adoration.

Boston fans, you see, have a distinctive self-importance about them that has, in recent times, pervaded the nation's general consciousness, especially with respect to the Red Sox. Maybe it's their city's history of martyrdom — tough times in the Sox' rivalry with the Yankees are referred to, without a hint of irony, as Boston Massacres. Maybe it's the general religious connotations placed on their teams — the end of the Sox' "Curse" in 2004 was considered the end of history by many fans, so surely some of them were surprised the next spring when baseball, miraculously, resumed.

One only has to look at the reaction to Johnny Damon's financially influenced defection to the Yankees to understand the Boston sports psyche. Damon, a hero of the World Series team and the iconic Red Sox player — the bearded and soft-spoken simpleton, the Jesus of the team — was branded a traitor. He immediately became a turncoat, a latter-day Benedict Arnold whose loyalty to Boston was, from the beginning, a disguise of his true intentions.

The best thing I can say about Yankee fans is that they understand professional baseball is a business, a minor inconvenience with which Boston fans have yet to come to terms. We, the American public, have been witnesses to the deification of the savior from the East, Daisuke Matsuzaka, the cherubic pitcher who, Boston fans and the national media decided, was going to lead the Sox back to the Promised Land. Dice-K, as he is known, has been no ace.

The arrival of Moss, notorious malcontent and generally unlikable guy, is naturally, then, a point of debate in New England. If a player is no angel, how are the fans supposed to react? It's too early to tell, though some writers and fans have lamented his coming to the team as a sign that the Patriots are somehow "selling out" to the normal, troubled ways of the league at large.

Again, there's that distinctive Boston self-importance. The fact is, Boston's sports heroes are people, just like all other cities' sports heroes. The usually reserved Belichick exposed himself as arrogant and self-important when he shoved a cameraman before gleefully hugging his defeated and somber former protege, Jets coach Eric Mangini. The Patriots players exposed themselves as classless when they danced on the Chargers' logo after upsetting San Diego during the next round of the 2007 playoffs.

Now, with the arrival of Moss and the drafting of gun-wielding, opponent-stomping Miami safey Brandon Meriweather, the Patriots are capitulating, and hopefully the national media will take notice. Moss, a special talent whose personal problems have been overlooked at every stage of his career, will make the Patriots a better football team, if not a better collection of people, and that is the bottom line. After all, the only gods in professional sports are the "W" and the Dollar.