He showed up in a limousine, with an escort of seven police officers. Randy Moss made a grand entrance his first day with the Oakland Raiders, proclaiming, "Who wouldn't want to be in silver and black?''

Two years later, April 2007, the answer was Randy Moss.

He had dogged it enough the Raiders traded him to the New England Patriots where he played brilliantly.

When he didn't dog it.

His comments when he came to Oakland, after Minnesota, before the Patriots, were, "It almost brought tears to my eyes, knowing there is still someone who wants me and cares about me. This is a class organization.''

Whether Randy Moss is a class football player is the question. Skilled? Indeed. Dedicated? Only now and then. As we found out once more.

In a case of déjà vu all over again or "How many times do you have to touch the wet paint to know it's not dry?'', Gillette Stadium version, Moss on Sunday was "persona disappeara.''

He was accused by a couple of people on the opposition, the Carolina Panthers, of giving up, to which for most players would be embarrassing but to Moss it was nothing out of the ordinary.

Having been disciplined by Patriots coach Bill Belichick a few days earlier, Moss against the Panthers caught one pass for 16 yards. Carolina safety Chris Harris and cornerback Chris Gamble, although unable to read Moss' mind, said they believed the wide receiver wasn't trying his best on every play.

The suspicion was hardly unprecedented. At his prior places of employment, seven years in Minnesota, two in Oakland, Moss simply did not try his best on every play. Once with the Vikings he did not even try his best to play.

Moss wandered off the field in a January 2004 game loss to the Redskins as Minnesota was lining up for an onside kick.

The next week, after Moss pantomimed pulling his pants down in a playoff win over Green Bay, it was time for him to leave. The Vikings, not the field. He'd already done that.

Oakland was the gullible party. A trade for Moss, who years earlier, Lou Holtz, then at Notre Dame, called "The greatest high school player I've ever seen.''

What the Raiders saw was someone who, as last Sunday, was derelict in his responsibilities, at times slowing down on balls he might have caught, at other times merely treating the ball as if it were infected with the H1N1 virus.

But such stunts so intrigued the Pats, they acquired him before the '07 season, and when Moss caught an NFL record 23 touchdown passes, it seemed a smart acquisition.

If you could excuse those two playoff games when he had only one catch total.

It was just Randy being Randy, we were told, Moss growing older but never maturing.

He continued to listen to his own drummer, which must be more pleasing to the ear than the words of teammates or authorities; not that Belichick or Pats quarterback Tom Brady in one of those "We'll throw him under the bus in April, not now'' orations tried weakly to defend the indefensible.

Randy's had his moments. They haven't all been good. Take 2002, when with the Vikings, he spent a night in jail after bumping a traffic control officer, was charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana and was screamed at by quarterback Daunte Culpepper on the sideline.

That triple made him irresistible to the Raiders. But he was an easterner out of sorts in the west. And when Moss failed to appear for off-season work in the spring of '07 during the brief reign of coach Lane Kiffin, he was moving on once more.

This is his third season in New England, and you wonder if there will be a fourth. Teammate Kevin Faulk implied Moss was mentally ruined because he and three others had been sent home for showing up late for an 8 a.m. midweek team meeting when icy roads affected their drive time to the Pats' facility.

"He was really hurt about the situation,'' Faulk said of Moss. Then denying Moss had gone into suspended animation, as the Panthers D-backs claimed, Faulk insisted "He loves football too much; this is what he loves to do and nobody understands that.''

He loves to do it only now and then, however. Randy Moss was a problem with the Vikings, a problem with the Raiders and now seemingly he's become a problem with the Patriots.

A wise man might detect a trend.