R.I.P. Mosi Tatupu

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Feb 19, 2008
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Beloved Mosi Tatupu left indelible imprint - BostonHerald.com

IN SOMEONE’S CHEST, USA - That’s where Mosi Tatupu spent his 13 years in a Patriots [team stats] uniform. No matter the city, if he was playing, that was where you’d find Tatupu - in someone’s chest.

Had he worked in construction rather than football all those years, he wouldn’t have done finish work. He would have swung a pick and laid the foundation. That’s the kind of football player he was, which is what perhaps made his unexpected passing Tuesday at the age of 54 so shocking to anyone who remembers “Mosi’s Mooses” - that fiercely loyal fan club that sat, fittingly enough, in end-zone seats rather than club seats.

It was the right place for Mosi’s Mooses to gather because that’s who the Patriots’ greatest special teams player was. He was a regular guy like them, a regular guy who became a cult hero, not because of nifty runs or soft hands or a chest-beating baritone, but because he played football the way the game is supposed to be played - hard and with unrelenting good cheer.

When they write the history of the NFL, Mosi Tatupu won’t even merit a footnote. When they write the history of the New England Patriots [team stats], the same may be true. He had no statistics to speak of, unless you count the bodies he left strewn around NFL stadiums when he was covering kicks and blocking linebackers while teammates got the glory.

He was the kind of guy you find on every job site, factory or mill. The guy who shows up every day. Never late, never sick, never complaining. The guy you don’t notice until he’s gone.

Yet there was a time in his youth when Tatupu could run. That was back at the Punahou School in Hawaii, where he set a state rushing record that stood for 17 years. He went from there to Southern Cal to find his true calling: blocking so others could run.

He did that fiercely enough that the Patriots drafted him in the eighth round in 1978, a Samoan guy most people thought would be back where he came from before the leaves fell. Instead, he kept making opponents fall, refusing to be ignored. Eventually he would become a short-yardage road grader and the kind of special team kamikaze who survives as much on wits as on will.

“I remember once against the Steelers,” longtime teammate Andre Tippett recalled yesterday. “We were covering a kick and I got sucked right into a double team block and got blown up. Mosi never got touched and made the tackle.

“He looked at me and says, ‘Boo, you gotta use your head.’ Mosi understood special teams and he understood in professional sports you’ve got to find your niche. That was his and he was happy with it.”
 
Not a star, but the type of player anyone would want on their team
 

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