Santana Moss advises teammates to erase loss from memory

After the Redskins‘ third consecutive offensive possession of the season ended in disaster, veteran wide receiver Santana Moss huddled his teammates and told them to settle down. He reminded them of the success they experienced last season, and told them they needed to “flush” the struggles, which included a fumble, an interception and a safety on the first three possessions.

“I just told the guys to calm down. Stuff’s going to happen,” Moss said. “It’s football. We saw the game the night before and watched the Giants go through some of the same things, but we know that’s not our team, so let’s get back to what we’ve done before. Don’t dwell on this.”

The Redskins dug their way out of a 26-7 hole, but still lost 33-27.

Although the offense finally settled in to a rhythm in the final quarter-and-a-half of play, Moss said little can be taken from the game. His advice to teammates was to erase the game from their memories – something he already had done.

“It’s already out. What’s done is done,” said Moss. ”Can’t go back. Now the week is already started and it’s time for us to prepare for Green Bay. That’s Monday. It’s over, it’s far from here right now.”

Moss added: “The thing in this game is, somebody has to take a loss. It’s nothing about – you lost one game, what is that going to affect? That’s not going to affect nothing but the people that don’t really know nothing about the game. You’re going to have to lose. Somebody has to lose, so you have to go out there with the mentality of ‘Okay, we’ve got one loss on our record. Now, we’ll go out and start all over.’ ”

Moss said his teammates shouldn’t even use the poor performance as a source of motivation because in his opinion, they should approach the meeting with the Packers as if they have a clean slate.

“No motivation. For what? You’re motivated to come out here and know you still have 15 more games left. You can’t be motivated by you went out there and laid an egg. Now we have a loss, we know we have to prepare, we know what we didn’t do right, and now we have to capitalize off that.”

Moss conceded that there were a few positives that he and his teammates can take from that second half.

“The rhythm felt a little better because we weren’t in a rhythm, but it’s far from what we can be and what we are made of. But it’s a step toward what we can be,” Moss said. “That’s our first game with Robert. To be honest with you, I didn’t expect it to be more. I didn’t expect the fumbles and stuff, and this and that, but I didn’t expect us to go out and look phenomenal. This was his first game. Every week he’s going to get better and we’re going to get better because we’ll have more time together to mesh. When you’re out there practicing, you can practice sharp and crisp, but until you play in a live game, with live bullets flying, you’re not going to really know how to take it. I’m glad he got a game under his belt, I’m glad we played better in the second half as a team, and we have to take and build off of it.”


(washingtonpost.com)