Reuters

During Randy Moss’s playing days, he was consistently dogged by criticism that he didn’t go hard on every play. But now the best offense in college football is instructing its wide receivers to do exactly what Moss did, and take it easy on plays when they’re not the primary receiver.

Baylor coach Art Briles, whose 8-0 team averages a whopping 57.4 points a game, told the Wall Street Journal that he makes a point of telling his receivers to save their energy on plays when they’re not getting the ball so they’ll be able to run at full speed into the fourth quarter on the plays when they are getting the ball.

“We’re consciously proud of that fact, because it is different,” Briles said. “Why make a dog chase an imaginary bone? If we’re going to run somebody [downfield], we’re going to throw them the ball.”

On many plays, Baylor identifies one receiver who has a favorable matchup and sends that receiver deep while the rest of the receivers just jog a few steps and watch.

That was exactly the kind of thing Moss used to do, and critics ripped him for it. No less an expert on playing the receiver position than Jerry Rice said that Moss’s laziness was hard to swallow. But maybe Moss was ahead of his time by recognizing that he could help his team more by saving his energy for the plays when he needed to go deep, rather than going hard on the plays when he wasn’t getting the ball anyway.

Patriots coach Bill Belichick once described Moss as, “Probably the smartest receiver I’ve ever coached. I know he absolutely knows what he’s doing.” Moss may have known that a receiver just can’t go all-out for 60 plays a game and still be at full speed in the fourth quarter. And Baylor may be benefitting from figuring out that Moss was more smart than lazy.