A game can be broken open like a melon tossed from a moving vehicle. Suddenly and violently, a simple slant pass becomes two missed tackles, a blur of speed and a 70-yard touchdown. A quick pitch, a cutback and a good seal on a linebacker becomes a 45-yard touchdown run so stunning it demoralizes not only the opposition but three lines of its descendants.

Then there's the tiptoes-in, third-down catch just before the two-minute warning. The punter is stretching his leg on the sideline, but then the pass is thrown and the feet touch down inbounds and great loud curses erupt from the other side of the field.

But what if we extend the definition by moving it off the field? Take it away from the crowds and the cameras and ask a different type of question: Can a player -- a probable Hall of Famer, no less -- break open a game in January by putting his arm around a rookie in July?

Cris Carter didn't have to do what he did. He could have kept the roster of his pre-training-camp workouts to the comfortable few: himself, teammate Jake Reed and college buddy Keith Byars. Nobody in the front office called him at home and said, "Randy Moss is on his way. Make a man of him."

But Moss, the kid with the unquestioned skills and the questionable past, came to work out near Carter's Florida home, and Carter welcomed him. Starting at 6:30 on muggy Florida mornings, they ran and they lifted and they talked. The topics varied, but you can be sure they touched on reputations and mistakes and how Carter, a recovering substance-abuser, turned his life around.

Carter is the NFL's Nobel laureate on image rehabilitation. He speaks to a gathering of rookies before every season, and his speeches are known for their savage bluntness. One of the first things he taught Moss was to take responsibility for his indiscretions. It's no one else's fault, he told him, and the media didn't create the problem. Just the same, there's only one person who can change it. Moss listened, and Carter says, "I was instrumental in Randy's adjustment, but keep this in mind: He did a lot of it on his own."

"We talked a lot about personal issues as well as football issues," Carter says. "It's pretty simple: I want Randy to be a better receiver and have a better career than I have had. That was -- and is -- my sole motivation."

Now, you wonder: How many games were broken open during those quiet talks between these two men? How many of the Vikings' 16 wins can be traced back to Florida in July? Given Moss' potential, is it too grand to ask how many championships were won, how many coaching jobs were lost or saved, how much money was made in those early morning hours? And is it too much to raise the possibility that the course of a life was forever altered?

Yet amid the slack-jawed giddiness surrounding Moss' dramatic entrance on the NFL scene, a point needs to be made: He would do well to approach -- much less match -- the career his mentor has assembled over 12 years. Carter is fourth all-time with 834 catches, behind only Jerry Rice, Art Monk and Andre Reed. His 101 receiving touchdowns put him one ahead of Steve Largent and into second place, behind Rice. He had consecutive 122-catch seasons (1994-95) to set a record for most ever in a two-year span. He topped 1,000 receiving yards this season for the sixth straight time. His 12 TDs, when added to Moss' 17, set a record for NFL receiving tandems. This is not a case of Cris Carter living through Randy Moss. But Carter's consistent excellence has become expected, as unnoticed as an electrical hum. He's the big (6'3", 220), strong possession receiver who can get down the field. "I'm not a game breaker. I'm a back breaker," he likes to say. What distinguishes him now is his willingness to make room, to open the door to both Moss and, by extension, a 15–1 regular season and the NFL's most prolific offense.

"Outside of the Randy issue, my role this year is relatively the same as it has been the last four or five years," he says. "There was never any resentment. Never once did I think I should be getting the ball more. I want Randy to be a better player than I was, and I'm willing to use what I know to help him get there."

Carter is an ordained minister, an athlete of God who defies the odds by failing to see the visage of Jesus in every sprained ankle or third-down conversion. He has described himself by saying, "I try to be steady as far as my walk every day and let people see God in me." In other words, he doesn't tell people to see God in him; he lets them do it on their own.

Carter brought to Moss a Zen-like blend of patience and knowledge -- worldly knowledge, the kind you feel and see in someone's eyes. Carter once manned his own precinct of hell -- addiction and its resulting personal torment -- and he says, "Right off, Randy had a great deal of respect for me."

Call Carter the altruistic game breaker then, a man with the vision to use his gifts to usher in the new era of game breaker. Just don't describe his influence on Moss as paternal, a term Carter finds not only discomforting but just plain wrong. He says he is not Moss' chaperone, not a father figure. Such terms tend to twist a relationship that is, in fact, more like a teacher's with a pupil. "It gets a little tiring," Carter says. "It's not like I'm waiting up for him at night. We spend nine hours together every day for five months -- what more do you want us to do?" The tone is unsentimental.

So, is the game breaker the guy who catches the 70-yard bomb, or the guy who tiptoes on the sideline to keep his feet inbounds? Or, like Cris Carter, is he both, along with a few added twists -- the player who keeps his head together, who plays for the good of the team, who understands the power of a helping hand and never puts himself above the good of the whole? After all, there are times when a game-breaking play ignites before your eyes like an unexpected meteor. And then there are times when it unfolds incrementally.

So Carter fits the patient mold and Moss is the meteor -- the teacher and pupil at the two extremes that fit our definition of game breaker. And Carter and Moss have strong company. Each of the four guys on the following pages -- Shannon Sharpe of the Broncos, Bryan Cox of the Jets, Ray Buchanan of the Falcons and Robert Smith of Carter and Moss' Vikings -- is perfectly capable of grabbing a championship game by the throat and turning it inside out. Some, like Sharpe and Cox, have been on the scene for a while, and so, like Carter, they don't just beat you with dazzle. Sharpe has a mouth that could provoke a statue. Cox has come back from being down so long the Jets looked like up to him -- and his fiery leadership has brought them up from the shadow of the Namath years. Buchanan and Smith are young players who can just blow up a game with one explosive play -- Smith with the ball under his arm and "Big Play" Ray picking it from an enemy's hands.

These are the game breakers -- don't dare take your eyes off them.

This article appears in the January 25, 1999 issue of ESPN The Magazine.