This Battle of Network Stars Is a Turnoff

The lesson to learn from this season is that there are no marquee matchups in the NFL anymore, that maybe watching Kurt Warner duel Gus Frerotte is as good as it gets.

As tantalizing the thought of watching Randy Moss run pass patterns against Deion Sanders on Monday night football sounded, in the end Gary Anderson and good old dependable Cris Carter combined to score more points than the exciting Moss, and the Cowboys ran out of name players to counter them.

After Emmitt Smith had touchdown runs of 63 and 24 yards on back-to-back plays in the second quarter, there would be no encore. He broke a bone in his right hand on the second touchdown and didn’t play in the second half. Smith said he will have surgery today and the initial estimate was he will miss two to three weeks.

Troy Aikman was knocked out of the game with a concussion in the third quarter, and with the injured Michael Irvin escorting him to the locker room, the only stars left for the Cowboys offense were on their helmets.

Carter kept making catches, nine for 116 yards and a touchdown. Moss got with the party for six receptions for 91 yards and two touchdowns, and a couple of Anderson field goals added up to a 27-17 victory for Minnesota at the Metrodome.

This game will be remembered more for keeping the Vikings’ playoff hopes alive than for moving more Moss jerseys out of the stores.

We don’t get many exciting one-on-one matchups in the NFL. Sure, there are great battles along the lines every play, but rarely do we spend an entire game looking at them.

In this game, however, they really did fight it out in the trenches. Viking defensive end Duane Clemons hit Cowboy offensive lineman Flozell Adams with an Andrew Golota special, and Erik Williams socked John Randle in the stomach.

It took replays to catch both of those plays.

Moss and Sanders are never out of sight. They command your attention. Deion’s even worth watching before the game, when he struts and dances and grooves to the music playing over the loudspeakers.

This game combined elements of Moss’ two greatest performances from his rookie season: Monday Night Football, on which Moss had 190 receiving yards and two touchdowns, and the Cowboys, whom he zinged for 163 yards and three touchdowns. Sanders missed that game with his toe injury.

So this was the first time Sanders and Moss would face each other. Except they didn’t do it very much.

With Minnesota employing three, four and even five wide receiver formations, Sanders spread his time lining up against practically half the Minnesota roster.

Letting Moss go one-on-one against someone without Sanders’ super powers is unfair.

Moss scored his touchdowns of four and 47 yards by leaping so high he caught a ball that zoomed by George Teague’s head in his stomach, and by running past Charlie Williams as if he were a first-down marker.

Head-to-head, Sanders and Moss finished up about even. Sanders hustled over to break up a pass intended for Moss in the first half and Moss broke a Sanders tackle to turn a short pass into an eight-yard gain in the third quarter.

We didn’t get to see them streak down the sidelines with a long pass up for grabs.

And we never got to see the two teams at their best, slugging it out. When the Cowboys had their full complement of starters, the Vikings were completely out of sync.

Actually, neither team did much in the first quarter. Vice presidential debates have had more exciting starts than this game. With the Minnesota fans worked up into a Monday night frenzy, both teams came out and produced a first-quarter dud that featured three missed field goals.

The Vikings could muster only three pass attempts by Jeff George, with no completions. They destroyed themselves with penalties and sacks allowed.

They didn’t record their first passing yards until 5 1/2 minutes remainied in the second quarter.

“Nothing was going right for us,” George said. “It had to get better.”

Before it did, Smith produced both Cowboy touchdowns in a span of 18 seconds with his one-play drives. He gained more than twice as many yards on those two plays than the Cowboys gained in the second half, when they amassed a paltry 41 yards.

Jason Garrett relieved Aikman and completed three of 11 passes for four yards. Rocket Ismail made only one catch for no gain after his six receptions for 63 yards in the first half.

“We lost concentration and execution in the second half offensively,” Dallas Coach Chan Gailey said.

Those things happen when you lose Emmitt Smiths and Troy Aikmans.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com

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NFL REWIND

Sunday’s rout in the Georgia Dome could have been a Super Bowl dress rehearsal for the Jacksonville Jaguars, who have the No. 1 scoring defense and overall defense in the NFL. Page 4

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THEIR PAL JOEY

After holding out for half the season, wide receiver Joey Galloway arrived in Seattle on Monday and is expected to report to the Seahawks today to end the longest holdout in the team’s history. Page 4