Yup, it was time to move on.
Head coach Bill Belichick gathered the team in the morning for a their regularly scheduled meeting, discussed the trade and preached the need to move ahead.
"I fully support Coach Belichick and whatever decisions he makes," Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker said. "Whatever decisions he's made — right or wrong, or good or indifferent — he's always had the team's best interest at heart. You've got to respect that, and we fully support him."
However, Welker said he was disappointed when he heard Moss asked out of New England. (During Moss' introductory news conference Thursday in Minnesota, he said "I don’t really know the answer" to a question about his desire to get traded.)
"That was kind of a difficult thing because he was the guy that was always giving pep talks before the game, halftime, after the game," Welker said. "[The team's] not knowing that he was wanting to get traded the whole time was a little bit disappointing. But at the same time, he's doing what's best for him. It's a business, and you've just got to kind of roll with it."
Moss' former teammates talked about him as a friend, a great player and someone they'd miss, but many in the locker room also said they'd have to pull together and have to move ahead without the dynamic downfield threat.
"I've been a part of a lot of different moves throughout the course of my career, so you still have to show up to work, come in and be a professional, make sure that a guy like myself keeps guys in the locker room together," tight end Alge Crumpler said. "So we'll go out there and continue to play. That’s all we can do. We've still got 12 games to play. It's important for us to go out as a team to go out and make things happen. We all in this locker room love Randy. He's a Hall of Fame player."
The Patriots conducted practice Thursday, and defensive lineman Vince Wilfork was disappointed he couldn’t hear Moss' routine humor during the team stretch.
"It was different," said Wilfork, who always stretched across from Moss. "But you know what? Things happen. You have to live with it and move on from it. That’s one thing we'll do. He's not here anymore, and we can't dwell over it. It happened. He's not here. Keep it moving."
There are still a whole bunch of questions that haven’t been answered, but the Patriots know the game will move on with or without them. They'll practice again Friday and then really engulf themselves in preparations for their Week 6 matchup against the Ravens.
Moss will move forward without them in Minnesota, and the Patriots have to move on without him in New England.
"We have a sign that says if you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to be here," Welker said. "I guess I'm not really sure of the scenario or anything like that, but it's kind of the way things worked out."
