Randy Moss and Terrell Owens Reach the Hall of Fame

This weekend in Canton, Ohio, Terrell Owens and Randy Moss will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame (the former in absentia, as he’s opted to hold a separate ceremony at his alma mater). The two wide receivers make for a fitting pair; they rank second and fourth, respectively, in all-time receiving yardage and third and second in receiving touchdowns. Through the late ’90s and 2000s, wearing a catalog of different uniforms (most notably San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Dallas for Owens, and Minnesota, Oakland, and New England for Moss), they put an uncommon degree of fear in opposing defenses. They were the sport’s premier gamebreakers, capable of scoring from anywhere at any moment.

It is more than just the statistical similarities that makes their entering the Hall in tandem feel appropriate. Moss of NFL lore. They carried teams and quit on them. The mainstream sports press branded them , athletes no parent would want their children to emulate. But as their admittance into football immortality coincides with an era of skepticism over the league’s uprightness—how it , , and its players—it is possible to see their careers in a different light. For all their foibles, and in an admittedly different political climate, Owens and Moss wrested what control they could, insisting on themselves as more than instruments of a coach’s gameplan or an owner’s profit.