(this is what it sometimes looks like after Randy Moss runs a route to completion)

“That™s a lot of conversation coming from a team that just lost another game.” That’s how the Hooded Casanova responded to claims by Panthers CB Chris Gamble that Patriots WR Randy Moss put the “I” in “quit” during New England’s 20-10 defeat of Carolina Sunday.  While Belichick and Tom Brady have Moss’ back, it will comes as no surprise to learn the Boston Herald’s Ron Borges, does not.  “Wednesday he showed up late for work; yesterday he never showed up at all.”

Art Shell coached Moss for one season in Oakland, and although he quit on the team that was paying him, Shell came away not disliking the player. Instead Shell simply says when asked about Moss, œRandy was a great player. He™s just easily daunted.

The Patriots are not playing well at the moment, and they know it. They have problems in their locker room and on their defense, and they know it. They have a coach trying to maintain order in a room where some of his hired hands are not quite true believers in the œIn Bill We Trust school of thought.

Where Moss stands on all that is unknown because, after he did nothing on the field yesterday, he said nothing off it. He simply dressed in funeral black and walked through the locker room and out the door, declining offers to chat. It was the most elusive he was all day.

There didn™t appear to be much fight in Randy Moss this week, or really since Darrelle Revis of the Jets shut him down for the second time this season four games ago. His catches have gone down, down, down – down from five to three to two to one (with an asterisk for the fumble). Not even constant carping how opponents œplay a safety over the top can explain away his lethargic play of late.