Remembering Mike Patrick's call of a legendary Randy Moss moment
Following the passing of the long-time ESPN broadcaster, we look back at his magical call of Randy Moss's only career punt return for touchdown
By Matthew Coller
By the time Randy Moss went into legend mode against the Kansas City Chiefs on December 12, 1999, announcer Mike Patrick had already long mastered the art of calling big plays.
The veteran broadcaster started his on-air career 33 years earlier at a radio station in Somerset, Pennsylvania and honed his craft calling Maryland college football and basketball games and Washington pro football in the mid-70s. When ESPN launched Sunday Night Football in 1987, they tabbed Patrick as the play-by-play announcer and placed him alongside former players Paul Maguire and Joe Theismann.
Over the 12 years prior to Moss’s classic play, the trio built up a unique chemistry.
Patrick was meticulous in his preparation, spending endless hours in his hotel room making sure that he had every detail ready to roll on Sunday. Sometimes it was a challenge to drag him away for practices, meetings with coaches or a meal on the road because he was so locked in.
Maguire, who was known as a punter in his playing days but also played linebacker, loved the trenches. He and John Madden were the first broadcasters to focus on the big boys and point out how big runs broke open or plays were blown up by blocking miscues. Maguire gave his analysis in quick strikes of energy, whereas the former quarterback Theismann was more analytical and verbose. He needed a little more space but that fit with the less-is-more style of Patrick.
Patrick’s mastery of the moment and the booth’s chemistry would shine during the most memorable play of that 41-degree night at Arrowhead Stadium in a matchup between two teams that were fighting for their playoff lives.
With Patrick’s passing at 80 years old in late April, it seems appropriate to look back at the story behind his majestic call of Moss’s punt return touchdown…
The Vikings entered Sunday Night Football in Week 14 of the 1999 NFL season as a disappointing team. They were only 7-5 following a 15-1 season in 1998 that saw them get to the brink of the Super Bowl, only to come a few inches wide left from reaching the pinnacle of the sport. After a rough start to the year, Randall Cunningham was benched in favor of Jeff George, who led the Vikings on a five-game winning streak that got them back into the playoff mix. A loss to Tampa Bay the previous week on Monday Night Football appeared to put their season in peril.
The Chiefs were in a similar spot. Wins in back-to-back games brought them to 7-5 in a tight AFC West race. The franchise in general was in an odd place. They fired Marty Schottenheimer after the ‘98 season and Gunther Cunningham took over a veteran team that was past its prime. Their future Hall of Famer Derrick Thomas, who had guided the team to brilliant defenses in the past, was struggling with only 3.0 sacks on the season and QB Elvis Grbac had settled into being a .500 quarterback after a hot 8-2 start to his Chiefs career in 1997.
Bottom line: Both teams needed this one.
Following camera shots of an insane crowd at Arrowhead, Mike Patrick set the stage by pointing out that the two clubs couldn’t be much more different in terms of their style of play.
“There’s an old boxing axiom that says styles make the fight, well, in this battle of heavyweights Kansas City is the mauler, they want to come out and bang you around and wear you down and make you go the distance,” Patrick said. “The Vikings are the punchers, they can come out throwing bombs and they want it over in a hurry.”
The game opened up the opposite of the way the booth expected. The Chiefs came out swinging with three touchdown drives by the early portion of the second quarter. Down 21-0, the Vikings got a boost when Robert Tate brought a kick back for touchdown.
At 21-7, the teams exchanged missed field goals and then at the 6:43 mark of the second quarter, the Chiefs finally had their first punt of the game. Back to receive: Randy Moss.
Normally you would not see a first-round pick wide receiver who put together an all-time great rookie season back returning punts but Vikings special teams coordinator Gary Zauner was always trying to convince head coach Denny Green to use their best players on special teams. One time he made a case for Pro Bowl right guard Randall McDaniel to play on the punt-blocking team. “No, Gary,” Green told him.
But in this instance he didn’t have much other choice but to say yes. Their normal returner David Palmer was out and Zauner had tried receiver Yo Murphy the previous week and he gained just 4.7 yards per return. The way Zauner remembers it, Tate was supposed to return punts that night but got banged up on his TD return. Out of guys to try and with a two-touchdown deficit, it was Moss time.
“Robert went down and I said, ‘Randy, I need you,’” Zauner said over the phone on Monday. “And he says, ‘what do you need me for? What do you want me to do?’”
Zauner knew Moss could do anything on a football field. On Fridays, the ST coordinator would have a “guest kicker,” where position players would sign up to try kicking and then the players would bet on whether the guy would make or miss, starting with an extra point and then moving back. Zauner said Moss was a good kicker.
Zauner had built up some cache with Moss through another side game at practice. On Saturdays, the players had invented a contest where they threw footballs at two helmets and the first player to 10 points (one point per hit) would win. Moss kept trying to get Zauner to play.
“He said, ‘come on coach, let’s play this game,’” Zauner explained. “I said, ‘Randy, I would kick your ass.’ I was a former quarterback. I said, ‘beat those guys and build up your confidence before you come to me.’ He says, ‘I think I’m ready for you.’ So I said OK and in about 10 minutes I kicked his ass and I said, ‘you better go back to work.’ But it was my way to build up my credibility with the kid that was a first-round draft pick.”
So when Zauner told Moss that he needed him, the superstar wide receiver was ready to rock.
The broadcast understood that Moss returning punts had the potential for something incredible. As Moss got prepared to return, director Marc Payton had the shot lined up. The lanky receiver looked like he was ready for the bell to ring in a boxing match.
Coverage of Moss on this night really began in the preseason when ESPN broadcasted one of the Vikings’ games.
“Moss’s rookie year was Barry Sanders’s last year and Barry Sanders was still the most exciting player in the league but then Barry retired,” said Fred Gaudelli, who produced ESPN’s Sunday Night Football from 1990 through 2000. “We had a Viking preseason game [in 1999] and we were talking about what we were going to talk about in the open and I said to McGuire, ‘you ought to say that with Barry Sanders retired, Randy Moss is now the most exciting player in the National Football League,’ and he said it… [Moss] was one of those guys where, when the ball got into his hands anything was possible.”
The buildup to the first punt return did not pay off. Moss slipped on the wet turf and went down for seven yards.
The moist weather that night would end up playing a big role in the outcome. With the Vikings down 21-14 in the third quarter, Grbac fumbled, setting up a 12-yard touchdown pass from George to Moss to tie the game.
At 21-21 early the fourth quarter, all hell broke loose. Moss fumbled a punt, giving the Chiefs the ball at the Minnesota 19-yard line. You can only imagine how Zauner was feeling at that moment.
“Randy Moss muffs the punt, huge break for Kansas City,” Patrick bellowed.
“That’s what happens when you put a guy back there who really doesn’t do it,” Theismann said.
One play later, the Vikings took the ball back as John Randle recovered a Tony Richardson fumble.
“Minnesota has it! Holy cow,” Patrick said in amazement. “Richardson hands it right back.”
Something to notice on these calls from Patrick is that they aren’t wordy. He was like an artist that could make a beautiful painting with two colors and a brush.
“In television you don’t have to speak in complete sentences, you can speak in ellipses because you have pictures that support the words that are coming out of your mouth,” Gaudelli explained. “I think he intuitively understood that. There are pictures here and I just have to write lyrics for these pictures, I don’t have to write an entire song. He was natural at that.”
The game wasn’t done being wacky with the back-to-back fumbles. Still tied at 21, the Vikings ran four straight times with Robert Smith and Leroy Hoard to blast into KC territory. But then disaster struck. Derrick Thomas whipped around the edge and sacked George, who fumbled the ball right into the hands of defensive lineman Eric Hicks. He returned it for a touchdown to give the Chiefs a 28-21 lead with 8:01 left in the game.
Oddly enough, the broadcast had anticipated this too. In the pregame meeting with Thomas, Gaudelli had asked him about a six-sack performance against George in 1997. Thomas promised to tell the Emmy-winning producer his secret if they didn’t talk about it until the game was underway.
“He goes: ‘I just want to line up where I can see Jeff George’s hands under center, I don’t care if they put two guys on me, he tips every snap. A second before the ball comes, he will flex his hands stiff in anticipation of catching the ball and I time that every single time. That’s how I sacked him six times that night,’” Gaudelli recalled.
“In this game he got three sacks. We had a camera shoot under the center to shoot his hands and we had it in a separate box to shoot Thomas’s eyes. It was one of the better production things we did.”
The Vikings got up off the mat and went to work offensively, driving to the KC 15-yard line with just over four minutes left in the game. Disaster struck again for Moss. Cornerback Cris Dishman stripped him on a quick pass and the Chiefs recovered.
“That shows you how much this team misses Cris Carter because Cris Carter was the guy who doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes,” Theismann said.
The Chiefs could have put the dagger in the Vikings but if you recall what Patrick said at the beginning of the game, KC was not the type of team to get aggressive in this spot. Instead they ran four times and then completed a short pass on third-and-10, running the clock down to 1:53 seconds with a seven-point lead.
Zauner gave Moss directions for this punt return. Normally they had plays that would either send the returner left or right.
“I said, here’s all I’m going to tell you: Catch it, then fake right, fake left and then go right up the middle,” Zauner said.
The camera zoomed in on Moss. Again, a boxer in the ring, bobbing back and forth with a different look in his eyes.
As the long snap comes to punter Daniel Pope, Patrick lets the crowd tell the story for a moment. Then when the ball reached his hands:
“Returnable kick from Moss from the 36….Look out!…. Goodnight!….64 yards…. touchdown,” Patrick blared.
“Everybody questioned last year how fast this guy is, well, he just showed you how fast he can be when he has to be,” McGuire said.
“Deion, are you watching?” Theismann added.
Zauner described it as the Red Sea parting. The moment Moss saw a crease, he was gone and then did a Deion Sanders-esque dance into the end zone.
“That call was vintage Mike,” Gaudelli said. “I think there were about five words in that but it perfectly captured what happened.”
“He wasn’t a yeller, he wasn’t a screamer, he wasn’t a carnival barker, so whatever enthusiasm he was injecting was real, it was his enthusiasm,” Gaudelli added.
The play was not just an instant classic from Moss but it was completely unique in a career of unending highlights. It was the only punt return for touchdown that Moss had and he finished his career with 18 total returns.
“Randy was an unbelievable talent,” Zauner said. “It was one of those deals where, you put him in there and boom, there he goes. He was the big playmaker like you say for all the years after that of him playing. I know we were all elated.”
Also elated was Gaudelli. Not just because Patrick nailed the call but he also understood how much genuine joy Patrick got from calling an incredible play like that in a big game at a venue like Arrowhead. And he knew it came from a man who treated others the right way.
“He is the most egoless announcer I’ve ever worked with,” Gaudelli said. “He was thrilled to be at the game and calling the game and really didn’t require much more than that. He was also one of the most genuinely kind people I’ve ever met in my life.”
The game went to overtime and ended with a lot less frills than it had in the fourth quarter. The Chiefs slowly drove down the field and kicked a short field goal to win it. The Vikings were left with an all-time great play from Moss and a bitter defeat.
However, the Vikings won their final three games and made the playoffs while Kansas City lost a 41-38 overtime game in the final week of the season to miss the postseason. Moss ended up adding to his highlight reel with a touchdown over Deion Sanders in a playoff win against Dallas before the Vikings fell short to The Greatest Show on Turf Rams.
Moss’s return and Patrick’s call live on though. Zauner, who still trains kickers, punters and long snappers, mentioned that he tells the tale of Moss’s return on a regular basis. Gaudelli didn’t have to be reminded of the details of the return despite the play happening 25-plus years ago.
Patrick’s passing only makes the memory grow stronger. In a career that spanned six decades, the legendary ESPN announcer had hundreds of big calls in games that players, coaches, producers, and fans will remember forever. The Moss return is just one of them. It demonstrated everything that was the great Mike Patrick and everything he loved about the game.
This is Coller The Journalist at his very best. Simply fantastic work. So much fun to read.
Really well written. Coller keeps putting out high quality work for this small subscriber newsletter! Very good afticle whether you are a Vikings follower or not.