Is Buffalo trying for a Moss redux? (photo by Beth)
So here I am on an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon, watching the Red Sox tee off on their ALCS nemesis, Tampa Bay, enjoying the idyllic pre-season pace of it all while I gear up for another work week. I began last year's baseball season with the worst football hangover I'd ever experienced, and I've been determined this year to make up for the fact that I couldn't muster any enthusiasm for my baseball team until at least last May or June.
But football will just not quit lobbing bombshells. Not even for a minute.
First, there was the news that T.O. had been released by the Dallas Cowboys. Man, if even Jerry Jones doesn't want to put up with you anymore, what does that say about you?
And now today, another TO-related meteor is heading for the Patriots' back yard; multiple media outlets are now reporting that he has signed a one-year, $6.5 million contract with our neighbor to the north, the Buffalo Bills.
Sounds to me like the Bills are trying their hand at the kind of move the Patriots made with Randy Moss when they brought him in with a one-year, highly conditional contract. Moss had also been a problem child on previous teams, but he became a model prisoner while playing with the Patriots. Most credit Belichick for that, but after witnessing Randy's heartbreak when Brady went down last year, I think that the QB deserves some credit for that, too.
I don't think the Bills have either the coach or franchise quarterback that the Patriots do to help keep a behavior problem like Moss or TO in check, and I think that TO is an even more dysfunctional player than Randy Moss ever was. But maybe that's just my bias as a Pats fan talking.
One thing's for sure--the 2009 season keeps getting more and more interesting, even before it begins.