Dylan Buell/Getty Images Thaddeus Moss of the Cincinnati Bengals at training camp on July 28, 2021.
The Pittsburgh Steelers worked out the son of Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver Randy Moss on January 3, this according to the NFL’s daily personnel notice.
Thaddeus Moss, 24, isn’t a wide receiver like his four-time All-Pro father. Instead, he has been trying to make it in the NFL as a tight end, without much success thus far.
Moss signed with Washington as an undrafted free agent following the 2020 NFL Draft, having played his college football at North Carolina State and LSU. He spent his rookie year on injured reserve before getting waived by the Commanders in April 2021, at which point he was claimed by Cincinnati, which kept him on its practice squad during the 2021 season. Moss re-signed with the Bengals in 2022 but failed to make the 53-man roster. He spent just one week on the practice squad before getting released.
Meanwhile, his dad was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018. Randy Moss, 45, played for five different teams in his 16-year NFL career, but is best remembered for the eight years he spent with the Minnesota Vikings (1998-2004) and the three seasons he toiled for the New England Patriots (2007-09).
Moss caught a total of 982 passes for 15,292 yards and 156 touchdown catches, as per Pro Football Reference, recording a career high 23 touchdown receptions in 2007, the last season in which he has was named first-team All-Pro. He was Minnesota’s first round pick in the 1998 draft, selected No. 21 overall out of Marshall.
The Steelers Also Worked out a Converted DT
On Tuesday the Steelers also worked former defensive tackle Mike Panasiuk, who played in 51 games for the Michigan State Spartans from 2016-19. During those four years, Panasiuk — 6-foot-4 and 300 pounds — recorded 100 tackles (60 solo), including 18 tackles for loss, plus four sacks, two interceptions and a half-dozen passes defensed, as well as one forced fumble and one fumble recovery.
Panasiuk signed with the Las Vegas Raiders as a rookie undrafted free agent in the spring of 2020 but was waived in early September that same year. Later that season he spent time on the practice squad of the Carolina Panthers. The Panthers brought him back in 2021, at which point he switched from defensive tackle to center. But an undisclosed injury led to him spending the season on injured reserve.
This isn’t the first time the Steelers have had Panasiuk in for a tryout; the team also considered him during training camp this past July, but he went unsigned.
Ex-Steelers LS Kameron Canaday Joins the Bears
In one other bit of transactional news from January 3, the Chicago Bears signed former Steelers long snapper Kameron Canaday to the practice squad, as per Aaron Wilson of Pro Football Network.
Canaday, 29, has struggled to find a new team ever since he lost his job to current Steelers long snapper Christian Kuntz, who beat him out in a “down to the wire” training camp competition in the summer of 2021.
Canaday has had numerous tryouts in the time since, including workouts with the New York Giants (September 2022) and Denver Broncos (August 2022), not to mention a September 2021 workout with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.