NC State freshman tight end Thaddeus Moss is used to adapting to any role or environment.
Thus, unsurprisingly, the 6-foot-4, 247-pound Moss has adjusted quickly to college football. He has earned early praise from NCSU coaches for his blocking through three games and has caught four passes for 29 yards, including his first career touchdown against Old Dominion, which was a three-yard toss from redshirt sophomore quarterback Jalan McClendon.
“That felt good, and it was good to get it out of the way,” said Moss, who didn’t get to keep the football. “I look forward to many to come. It’s a little special being the first touchdown.”
Junior teammate Jaylen Samuels, who like Moss played at Charlotte’s Mallard Creek High, half-joked that Moss will need many more to one day catch up to his legendary father. Wide receiver Randy Moss caught 982 passes for 15,292 yards and 156 touchdowns during his NFL career with five teams from 1998-2012. He also caught 174 passes for 3,529 yards and 54 touchdowns during his two-year career at Marshall.
The younger Moss, who helped Mallard Creek win the 2015 NCHSAA 4AA state title, was one of the crown jewels in the Wolfpack’s class of 2016, and is getting the chance to forge his own path. Rivals.com ranked Moss the No. 123 overall player in the country, the No. 6 tight end nationally and the No. 7 overall senior in the state of North Carolina. He had scholarship offers from coast to coast — totaling 23 tenders — but he only took two official visits.
Moss picked NC State over Texas A&M and others, giving position coach Eddie Faulkner, who also recruits the Charlotte-area, a gifted player to work with and another Queen City product on his recruiting résumé.
“It just came down to being close to home and being comfortable here,” Moss said. “I was comfortable with Coach Faulkner, [offensive coordinator] Coach [Eli] Drinkwitz and Coach Doeren. It has been everything that I expected it to be.”
Since arriving in Raleligh, Moss has shown the gift of taking what he sees in the film room out onto the field, rather than having to do several repetitions to get things perfected. He half-joked that it is “just in the blood.”
“He has that ‘it’ factor to it. He’s a good one,” Faulkner said. “Thaddeus is smart, and coming from a high football IQ background he understands the game for what it is.”
Doeren discovered during the recruiting process that Moss had impressive football smarts to help with the nuances of run blocking and the passing game.
“It says a lot about his learning ability as a football player,” Doeren said. “He can block. He is a physical dude and can catch the ball. He has good hands. He is going to be a special player if he continues down the right path.”
Moss attended four different high schools in four years, including Charlotte Victory Christian as a junior and then Mallard Creek, where he caught 54 passes for 831 yards and 13 touchdowns his senior year. The accumulation of meeting new people, teammates and coaches has given him plenty of life experience before he reached NC State.
“I had to learn four different offenses,” said Moss, who lists Charleston, W.Va., as his hometown. “Learning offenses for me isn’t that hard. [Going to Mallard Creek] got me more prepared for college. Mallard Creek is like a little college with how practice is set up.”
Moss’ ability to pick things up quickly was a recurring theme with the Wolfpack offensive coaches. Both Faulkner and Drinkwitz, NCSU’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, understand how much an incoming freshman has to learn to succeed at this level, and Drinkwitz knows how important previously being a tight ends coach was in helping him learn all facets of offenses.
Drinkwitz figures quarterback and tight end are the most detailed offensive positions for an incoming freshman to learn.
“The tight ends have to be the most dialed-in person on the field because they are involved in everything — run game, passing game, and all our shifts and motions,” Drinkwitz said. “I know Coach Faulkner does a great job of that.”
Some might wonder how much coaching could go into having just seven players in the position group. Faulkner, though, pointed out how that the small room has helped them become a tight-knit unit.
“We embrace things as a group and can do some things [on the field] that other guys can’t,” Faulkner said. “We can make things right on the football field based on a given picture or somebody didn’t do their assignment right. We can fix it.
“That is something we take pride in as a group. We have to be tied into everything.”
“We are close in there, and it’s like a family," Moss added. "I love coach Faulk. He’s a big reason I came here.”
Junior tight end Cole Cook has also done a good job of passing down what he has learned the last two years to Moss.
“We’ve watched extra film, and I’ve called or texted him at night whenever I have questions about plays and the playbook,” Moss said. “Our offense isn’t that difficult, so it has been easy."
Faulkner said having good run blockers like Cook and Moss can be undervalued. When individuals think about run blocking, the offensive line immediately pops up. Similarly, wide receivers and quarterbacks get the credit in the passing game. Ironically one of Randy Moss’ former pro coaches has legitimately helped make tight ends be “pretty cool” in the NFL — head coach Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots.
“I love the tight end position, and it’s hard to find in college football,” Faulkner said. “We are one of the few schools that use them the way that they need to be used.
“We want to be that guy that is in the background, but the people who are in the locker room with them and in the building know that position is important to what goes on.”
Moss is technically listed as tight end/fullback on the NC State roster and is second-string behind Samuels. Moss admitted that he maybe had one jet sweep run in high school, so that is one noticeable difference in the comparison to Samuels.
“Jaylen and I have different playing styles,” Moss acknowledged. “They call some plays for J-Sam they wouldn’t call for me, and I think vice-versa.”
