The NFL Journey: Catching Up with Dale Moss

Riggs Premier Football is extremely excited to have Dale Moss joining our coaching staff during his NFL off season this spring. I have worked with him before, and I greatly respect and appreciate his athletic talent, work ethic, determination, and integrity. This is a tremendous opportunity for area athletes to work with a top quality athlete and person. This past year has been an amazing journey for Dale, so I asked him a few questions to get some insight into his thoughts at this stage of his football career:

Pre-season game with the Packers

Can you catch us up on how things went during your first year in the NFL?
Overall I think things went well. I grew a lot as a player and even more as a person. Only having a year of football experience under my belt since high school, I really felt I needed this year to improve. I made great impressions everywhere I went, which only gives me confidence going into this upcoming year.

Did you feel prepared for the things you experienced this past year, both on and off the field?
I felt prepared physically and skill-wise, but being so new to the game, there were a lot of situations that I hadn't experienced in college. Off the field was not a big adjustment because I'm a pretty low key guy, so outside of football I would just hang out with teammates.

If there was one thing you didn't know that you wished you had going into this...what would it be?
If there was one thing I wish I had known going into things, it would probably just be a better understanding of how to play the slot position. I learned a lot as the year went on, and if you can play outside and the slot, you can create a lot of problems for teams.

What are you most looking forward to for next season?
My main goal is to obviously get on our active 53 man roster which I feel really confident about, and then I just want to continue to grow as a player and help my team win.

East-West Shrine Game

What are you doing with your off season break?
I'll be back home until the end of March, and basically I'll just be hanging out with friends and family, training, and coaching. It's nice to get a little bit of a break, but I'm continually trying to get better. So while its called an "off season," I'm still making sure I'm working hard every day!

You are a very motivated person. What are the things that motivate and inspire you?
My friends, family, and home state are huge motivating factors for me, but I'd say the biggest one is probably people who doubt me and say I can't do something. I'm a very motivated and confident person, so when I get negativity or doubt thrown my way, I try and use it as fuel to get better. That's why I went out for football in the first place in college. I'm a firm believer that if you put in the time and make a few sacrifices, there will be no option but to find success.

What advice would you offer a 6th grader who says he wants to grow up and be just like you?
I'd say first and foremost, you want to be as good of a person as you can be. People underestimate how far being humble goes in all aspects of life. From there you just have to believe in your abilities, be coach-able, and work hard! Don't be afraid to take the route most people avoid because its tough. Those challenges make you grow as a player and person, and they separate you from the competition.

What do you consider your greatest success so far? Your greatest disappointment?
My greatest success so far has been getting to the NFL and getting my foot in the door. There are a lot of things I want to accomplish, and I'm on the right path. My biggest disappointment was missing out on state high school championships in football and basketball. Those are things that I really wanted for my teammates and community, more than myself. Now my goal is a Super Bowl!

What is the most valuable lesson you have learned from your involvement in sports?
Without a doubt, it's accountability and discipline. Those are things that will help you throughout life, but when you have multiple teammates and coaches depending on you, it is just huge! Accountability and discipline get you to the next level and help you grow as a team and individual.

These are some great insights at this stage of Dale's NFL career, and we are really looking forward to working with him this spring and watching him share his many talents and abilities with our athletes.  No option but success!

Discipline and Determination: Tools to Success

The end of the youth football season is fast approaching, and that is a great time to reflect on the "teachable moments" that have come during the season.  Some of the lessons are about fundamentals and technique, but there are bigger lessons to be learned from our involvement...that's why we love the game.  So I asked a variety of people from all walks of life to tell me the most important lessons they learned from football.  There has been a wide range of answers, but two of the themes that have come up repeatedly involve discipline and determination. Those two qualities are important parts of success and sportsmanship. A program that develops and promotes those qualities will lead to an atmosphere which lets athletes know they worked hard, gave their best effort and can walk away knowing that they "left it all on the field."

 

Some of the comments focused on the importance of mental and physical discipline: 

It's a physical and mental game, be ready for both. –Jean Z. 

You have to be physically tough, but more importantly mentally tough to excel at football. –Keith P.

Others stressed the importance of training and practice to develop discipline: 

Train harder than your opponent. --Cory S. 

Practice until you reach a stage where actions follow automatically. --Kristy P.

It was good to hear recognition of all aspects of discipline and the importance of practice and training to success. Practice is what I love most about coaching. It gives me the opportunity to mold young men into a cohesive unit that will go onto the field with a common goal. Practice is critical to refine the many elements that will make a team successful. Individuals need to know the play, the coach’s expectations, the rules, the audibles, sight adjustments, and their assignments.  Then they have to put that all in motion as a team, and that takes extreme discipline. People think of games as the time to learn about football, but practice is where players develop the discipline to work together and learn the intangibles that translate into success on the field.

Discipline doesn’t come easy for individuals or teams, and other comments recognized the importance of determination to overcoming adversity: 

How people (players, coaches, and fans) react to negative situations. When things go bad, how do you handle yourself to overcome it? Losing control will only help you lose more games. --Shannon P.

Don't ever give up. You never know how much you can do if you give up. --Jadyn S. 

Being able to respond well to negative situations is a critical component of sportsmanship.  Football is extremely challenging, and it is easy to want to quit when things are difficult. But finishing a play, a quarter, a half, and a game after endless hours of practice, or when you didn’t believe you could do it, is one of the most fulfilling feelings an athlete can experience. And once an athlete sees the reward of his determination, he works harder, becomes more disciplined, and ultimately becomes a better athlete.

Discipline and determination were the first two "lessons" that people discussed, and the next two are respect and humility. Stay tuned...