Trading a veteran player during the draft is a precarious process, and Bill Belichick explained during this year’s draft how difficult it was to trade with the Raiders for Hall of Fame wide receiver Randy Moss.
Appearing with Pat McAfee, Belichick detailed how he talked to Al Davis to get the trade worked out, for the bargain-basement deal of a fourth-round draft pick. That wasn’t going to be easy, as the draft had already started and Moss needed to pass a physical and agree to a new contract before the Patriots‘ fourth-round pick was on the clock.
“The most interesting trade was the Randy Moss trade,” Belichick said. “We had been trying to trade for him for two months, it was like childbirth, it took forever. After the first day of the draft, I talked to Mr. Davis, I said, ‘Are we going to do this deal or not?’ He said, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it for a fourth.’ I said, ‘We’ve got to get the guy for a physical, we have to renegotiate his contract.’ Mr. Davis said, ‘That’s your problem.'”
Belichick said he quickly got to work on trying to track Moss down for a physical and a contract negotiation session, but Moss didn’t realize the Patriots were really trading for him and hung up because he thought it was a prank call.
“I call up Randy, I said, ‘It’s coach Belichick.’ He hangs up the phone,” Belichick said, adding that Moss demanded to know, “Who’s pranking me? Is this a joke? This better not be a joke. Who is this?”
Eventually, Moss believed Belichick was for real and listened when Belichick told him the clock was ticking to get the deal done.
“He said, ‘What do I need to do?’ I said, ‘We got to get you up here, you got to take a physical.’ He said, ‘By noon?’ I said yeah. He said, ‘Well, I’m in Houston, but I’ve got a plane, I’ll be there.'”
Belichick says that as soon as Moss arrived in New England, he impressed with his dedication to the team.
“First thing he says to me is, ‘Where’s the playbook?'” Belichick recalled, adding that Moss vowed to learn the offense as well as Tom Brady knew it.
It worked out well, as Moss caught 23 touchdown passes in his first season as a Patriot, and New England went 16-0.