Moss’s eight catches and 92 yards were his second-best totals in both categories this season. He was Washington’s only offensive weapon. He produced the Redskins’ longest play of the night out of nothing, a screen right that he cut back across the field. He broke Dallas CB Terence Newman’s tackle on quick pass in the second half and gained 17 yards. Moss also did a nice job adjusting to a pass that was behind him near the left sideline early in the third quarter. He was able to gain seven yards and set up a manageable third-and-2, which the Redskins converted.

“Those guys were prepared,” Moss said. “They knew everything. I remember guys calling my routes off of my alignments. It’s very interesting. When we play the Giants, they come up with a whole different game plan. I’ve never seen the same thing playing them. Out of all the times we’ve played them, they come up with something different the first and second game.

“Those guys knew more than us and knew things that we were doing before the snap. It’s hard to do something if someone is waiting on you to do it. Or they’re putting you in a situation where they want you to check into it so they can get you to do what they know you’re going to do. You can’t get off the ball here and there and you can’t be yourself at the quarterback position. If he’s out of whack, we’re out of whack.”
Moss said other teams do not call out the Redskins’ pass routes at the line.

“You might see it now and then, where a team might look at something, but to hear it wows you at times,” Moss said. “Before you’re running routes, you hear guys saying they’re looking for this. We ran a route one time where I knew they knew my alignment so I changed it and when they called out … I heard the guys talking, saying I thought he would do this. I was shaking my head.”

On Thursday, Moss offered the strongest defense of Portis of any Redskin. The running back was placed on the season-ending injured-reserve list Tuesday, and he hasn’t played since suffering a concussion Nov. 8 at Atlanta. But even before that happened, Portis’s production was down, and analysts and fans questioned whether he had lost a step or if his career might be coming to an end.

“People always say stuff when you’re not doing something,” Moss said. “But you look at what we had this year. What do you expect? What do you expect from a running back to be going through what we [are] going through season-wise, and not getting the carries that he’s normally getting to get himself going? You can’t do nothing.

“I mean, people are always going to have their mixed views, and that’s what you hate about this game, because it’s never up to you to say what you really [are] going through, or what you have going on. It’s always someone else’s opinion.”

Moss’s opinion: Portis will be back next year. “When it comes down to his situation, health is more important than anything,” Moss said. “He’ll get his time to rest, and I’m sure, if everything goes well, he’ll be badder than ever next year.”

Portis acknowledged on ESPN 980 earlier this week that his career might be over. But Moss believes the challenge presented by those who doubt him could serve as a motivator to Portis.

“Knowing the competitor in him, if Clinton [is] ready to go, he’s going to be ready to go,” Moss said. “He loves the challenge. I remember last year, when they started talking about different things last year with him about the year before, and you see what he did out there,” when he ran for 1,487 yards.

“If you look at it, Clinton never had the line that he had back in Denver. That’s not saying nothing against our line; it’s just it’s a different kind of league over here. The lines over here [have] been pretty good, but when it comes to what he had in Denver, man, you would pay for that. He’s been grinding it out. He had to gain weight to be able to take on the load. He had to do a lot of different things that he wasn’t accustomed to doing, and is still one of the greatest backs of this time. I always get caught up in it. I’ll stand up for him.”

But …

“He always finds some kind of way to have an astronomical game against us,” linebacker Bradie James said. “We know those guys real well. We know Moss. For you guys that don’t have twin turbos, it’s a sixth gear. He has a sixth gear when he plays against us.”

James is right. Moss has made a living off of torturing the Cowboys. In seven games he has 41 catches for 711 yards and four touchdowns. He has had more than 100 yards in four games. The cruelest, of course, was the five-catchy, 159-yard, two-touchdown game in 2005 when the Triplets were inducted into the Ring of Honor.

In his first three games against the Cowboys since Wade Phillips took over, he had 25 catches for 381 yards. But in the last game, he had just five catches for 29 yards thanks to Terence Newman, who shadowed him all over the field.

Earlier this season Newman shadowed Carolina’s Steve Smith and limited him to four catches for 38 yards and three of those catches came on the Panthers’ first drive.

EDGE: Newman

“Obviously, when I’m out there, I want to be out there,” Moss said. “I just take it the way they give it to me. I don’t want no more than what they give to me. I think I still have a knack for doing it. I love the position because it got me to this level, but when it comes to being out there fulltime, I don’t really care for that. I’ve had my share of fulltime duties in New York [for the Jets]. I did enough of that. Now my focus is bigger and different. But when it’s asked upon, I’ll go out there because I know it’s for the team.”

Moss said it’s not a question of returning punts hurting him as the team’s No. 1 receiver.

“Especially when you haven’t had the ball a lot offensively, it helps me get into the game,” Moss said. “It kinda breaks the ice a little bit if I hadn’t had a catch yet. It’s just something that certain guys can do. I relish teh moment just to be out there because I know that I’m one block here or one missed tackle from making a big play. A good punt returner is a guy who can make most of the guys miss. Our goal is always to make the first guy miss and get 10 yards.”

“You just got to be ready,” Moss said. “They showed … that they was going to cloud me, have a safety over the top. Just when they didn’t, we had the perfect play dialed up.”

The last Redskin to have 50-yard touchdown catches in back-to-back games was Gary Clark on Dec. 6 and 13, 1987.

“That’s something that the team got to deal with. I’m a player,” Moss said Thursday. “I’m going to want more. But what can I do about it? All I can do is just keep doing my job. Maybe they’ll see me one day. Y’all watch football. Y’all know what’s going on. I don’t have to sit here and tell you that I need something more. Teams are playing to me, so therefore, somebody else got to get open.”

That, of course, hasn’t happened with enough regularity yet. Second-year receiver Malcolm Kelly, who earned the starting spot opposite Moss during the preseason, has five catches for 47 yards, and Devin Thomas, also in his second year, doesn’t have a catch yet. The bulk of quarterback Jason Campbell’s throws have gone to tight end Chris Cooley (14 catches-151 yards) and slot receiver Antwaan Randle El (11 catches-137 yards).

“I can’t control the things I can’t control,” Moss said. “The only thing I can control is be the guy I am, continue to practice hard, and when it all swings over, you’ll see that circle on the field, they’ll be showing the highlights, saying, ‘Okay, here he goes, he got freed up and he made a play.’”

Last year, Moss’s most explosive day came at Detroit, where the Redskins play this year. He caught nine passes for 140 yards – including a 50-yard touchdown – and also returned a punt for a touchdown.

“They might double the crap out of me, too,” Moss said of the Lions. “I always expect the worst but hope for the best. All I can do is continue to be the player I am. I can’t really worry about what’s going on. I just feel like with me getting some of the looks I’ve been getting, somebody else is going to get a chance. If you play me like that the whole year, then hopefully that guy who’s getting that chance has an outstanding year, you know what I mean? Just one of those years that’s going to make you say, ‘Man we got to do something different.’

“But I’m very confident just knowing the guy that I am, when I do get the opportunity, I’ll show up. So I’m not tripping about it.”

Still, Moss said he was hopeful that coverages would roll away from him if Kelly or Thomas established himself as a legitimate threat. He said it hasn’t happened yet.

“I didn’t expect the first two games to have guys pressing on me, safeties over the top,” he said. “Even when you think the safety’s blitzing on your side, the back side safety’s coming over the top. I mean, it’s weird. But I guess you can say they know something that hopefully that everybody else know.”

Coach Jim Zorn made a concerted effort to target Moss in the Redskins’ 9-7 victory over St. Louis last Sunday. But he said he can’t just force the ball to his top wideout.

“I can just tell you we’re trying,” Zorn said. “Our effort is there. I think it would be a real problem if you’d see him coming to my office going, ‘What’s up man? What about me?’ So I think he realizes that we’re making efforts, and we’re going to continue to do that.”

Moss, for his part, is trying to be professional about the lack of production. His longest catch is for 21 yards. After two games last year, he had 12 catches for 201 yards, including a 67-yard touchdown.

“I’d be an expert if I had a solution for what we going through, or knew more,” Moss said. “At the end of the day, I’m a player that’s hungry as all outdoors, and trying to be all I can be for this team, whether I’m going to take a couple of guys out of the formation by them covering me, or whether I’m going to beat a couple of guys. However I’m going to have to do it, I’m going to do it.”

“We had a lot of great athletes, but he was able to instill discipline in us, which allowed us to play at any level. We took that discipline to college and, for those of us fortunate enough, to the NFL. He kept us humble, me in particular. I was a starter for three years, but didn’t catch many balls until my senior year. He kept us humble and patient and then when the time came, he helped us take advantage of the opportunity. He made sure we were in school. Actually, he made us come to school early to watch film so we were there even before the school day started. It is a place that is blessed with athletic talent, kids who are willing to sacrifice, a community that supports the program and good people at the top.”

The only school that has more current NFL players than Carol City? DeMatha Catholic in Hyattsville Maryland. No offense to the private school scholars, but we’re more impressed by the ascent of our hard-scrabble Miamians. And more NFLers call our city their hometown- 31- than any other in the country. As a state, Florida ranked third for current NFL players produced, with a whopping 176.

Then I met K.D. Wright, owner of a custom-tailored men’s clothing company from Charlotte, who figured we could strike some kind of deal. She’d become part of Sports Bog, Inc., for the night, in exchange for talking my way into the better parts of the party.

So a few minutes later, she was leading me through the upper reaches of the VIP section, around a corner and to a little roiund table where Santana Moss was sitting by himself, drinking a pineapple and Grey Goose, in front of a window peeking out at the gleaming Capitol Building. I told K.D. she might as well continue her roll and ask the questions, so she started asking Santana about the inauguration.

“To be honest with you, when he first decided he was running for president, I felt like this time and age, what we’re going through, we needed that,” Moss said. “We needed for everybody out there to have hope, to have HOPE. It started with hope, and it started with belief, and now we believe we can have what we have today, a Black President.”

“For me,” Santana continued, “I look past just the black and white thing, I look at what the guy’s gonna do for his people.”

K.D. asked who Obama’s “people” were.

“His people is US,” Moss said. “Everybody that walks the earth. I look at it like this, and this is just my perspective: when you look at what has happened for us this year, Barack Obama, a black man, no matter what you call him, that’s a celebration for all minorities. That’s a celebration for anyone who’s seen what he’s gone through.

“My family isn’t living the life I’m living. This thing is a celebration, showing that maybe one day you CAN get to where we’ve got to. [Black] kids growing up, you were told you could be anything, but never the president.”

“I got my inspiration to make a difference at a young age,” said Santana Moss. “I always said that I wanted to give back to the kids once I got older. As a role model to them, I want to show them that we all came from the same neighborhoods, and if I can make it, they can make it.”

Washington Redskins Santana Moss established his Santana Moss Foundation in 2002 to help build a stronger America, beginning with its children. He said he’s always thought of himself as a role model, first to his two younger brothers and then to the young beneficiaries of his foundation. Now he’s teaming up with one of his brothers—New York Giants Sinorice Moss—and the foundation has become the Moss Brothers Foundation, focused on improving the lives of children in Miami.

One of the events held to benefit the foundation is the Moss Brothers Celebrity Weekend, an annual fundraiser in Miami that attracts some of the NFL’s biggest stars. The proceeds from this year’s event benefited the Moss Brothers Foundation and the foundation of the late Sean Taylor, former teammate and close friend of Santana’s. The weekend’s activities included the Moss Brothers Kids Day at the Movies, a community fair and a celebrity softball game.

“For the last few years we have been throwing a movie party for a couple of elementary schools in the Miami area,” Santana said. “My brother and I talk to the kids after the movie is over and give them the Santana Moss coloring book. The book has word puzzles and things they can do that deal with life situations. I have guys like Andre Johnson, Edgerrin James, Clinton Portis and Willis McGahee come out and be a part of the game.”

In addition to the Celebrity Weekend, the foundation holds the annual Santana Moss Football Camp, which provides campers with basic football skills in a constructive environment. The camp is focused on creating well-rounded student-athletes.

“My whole goal is not to touch every kid, because that is impossible,” Santana Moss said. “Hopefully there are one or two kids who remember what we did for them, and 10 years from now, they will also give back. If I touch every kid, then that is 10 times what I expected.”