Cowboys Gather No Moss

DALLAS —  What a letdown. It was like sitting down for a grand Thanksgiving dinner and discovering someone forgot to stuff the turkey.

The Dallas Cowboys ran onto the field Thursday with no Deion Sanders, and should have brought back Don Meredith to sing, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over.”

Taking the advice of team doctors, Sanders rested his ailing big toe. No Deion and no hope for the Cowboys, leaving rookie wide receiver Randy Moss to carve up Dallas’ secondary, serving up a 46-36 victory for the Minnesota Vikings before 64,366 in Texas Stadium and establishing Moss to a national television audience as the NFL’s No. 1 showman.

Make it a Hail Moss and throw it up for grabs every play--he’ll catch it. The only way to stop him is pass interference, which puts the Vikings in position for someone else to score.

Afterward, ask him about being so good, and he will snap, “I’m not talking.”

Twelve games into his professional career, and after a big-play performance that included three catches for 163 yards and three touchdowns, he was grumpy, telling the media, “I don’t know what you’re standing around for. . . . I don’t feel like talking.”

Happy Thanksgiving to you too.

Viking Coach Dennis Green, advised that his phenom was brushing off the media, said, “He only caught three passes.”

Everyone else was talking, but who cared? Moss put on the show, and while quick to make himself available for Fox and John Madden’s tiring turkey routine, he told the reporters in the locker room, “You all not TV.”

Then he put on his earrings, adjusted his gold necklace with the gold dollar sign, pulled up frayed bluejeans with telephone and beeper attached, tugged on army boots, put on headphones and breezed out of the locker room on the arm of a security guard.

Thanks for the memories.

Viking running back Leroy Hoard made two of the best touchdown runs of the season, and in comparison to the thrills provided by Moss on the field, they looked like belly flops into the end zone.

The Vikings (11-1), looking like a worthy opponent for the undefeated Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXXIII, had five touchdowns of 50 yards or longer and a pass interference call generated by Moss’ brilliance for 50 more yards.

The Cowboys (8-4) played a very nice conventional game of football. They were so persistent for a time that quarterback Troy Aikman set a team record with 57 pass attempts, and came within six yards of breaking Meredith’s 1963 team record of 460 yards passing.

Aikman might have had 500 yards, but his receivers dropped eight passes. Emmitt Smith, running on a sore ankle, ran for 44 yards to move past Jim Brown into fifth place on the NFL’s all-time rushing list (12,341 yards), and his three rushing touchdowns tied him with Marcus Allen for the NFL record with 123.

Michael Irvin caught 10 passes for 137 yards. At one point in the third quarter, the Cowboys had climbed to within five points. A moral victory.

But with less than two minutes to play, parked inside the Viking 10-yard line with a chance to score, the Cowboys cried, “No Moss, no Moss,” and huddled, allowing the clock to run down, before finally scoring.

“It’s irrelevant now, but any time you lose a player like Deion Sanders it’s going to affect your game,” Cowboy Coach Chan Gailey said. “It looks to me like that Randy Moss is an exceptional receiver.”

Gailey will be available during the week for further expert analysis.

Last Sunday, Moss destroyed the Green Bay Packers, and now that Jake Reed is hurt, the Vikings have been forced to start him. Forced. Now that’s a laugh.

His third catch this day was so spectacular it had the Cowboys’ defenders standing with their hands on their hips in disbelief.

Moss took a short pass from quarterback Randall Cunningham at the Viking 48 and, with a flick of his hips, shucked aside Cowboy defender Charlie Williams. Then, with cornerback Terry Billups in pursuit at what seemed an advantageous angle for Billups, he stutter-stepped while kicking into a higher gear and blew past the defender to score on a 56-yard play.

Sure, it sounds like a fish story, but it would be hard to believe Carl Lewis could run any faster. Hard to believe anyone in pro football--with the exception of Sanders--could even think about catching him.

Cowboy officials passed out white towels to fans entering the stadium, and after Moss caught his second touchdown pass in the first quarter, it would have been a good time to wave them in surrender.

Moss scored his first touchdown 1:57 into the game. Cunningham handed the ball to running back Robert Smith, who pitched it back to Cunningham.

Dallas cornerback Kevin Smith, biting on the handoff to Smith, recovered too late when Smith tossed the ball to Cunningham, who then heaved it to Moss for a 51-yard touchdown.

To heck with NFL rules, the Cowboys should have taken Sanders, who was designated inactive, and put him in uniform. Instead they elected to line a cornerback on Moss, who by game’s end had run his season totals to 47 receptions for 1,014 yards and 11 touchdowns, with a safety standing in support 15 yards behind the cornerback.

This wasn’t double coverage as much as prevention from further embarrassment.