Dirtman and The Prototype: Why Broncos’ Riley Moss is wired for the pressure as Pat Surtain’s CB2

He rolled into position meetings in a backwards baseball cap, white tank top and scissor-cut sweat shorts, always bringing a dash of predictable chaos. Some days, he tugged on shoes without socks. Some days, he clomped around in Birkenstocks. He grew out waves of long brown hair that he never washed.

Riley Moss was the sociable hermit in the caverns of Iowa’s practice facility.

Eventually, Iowa linebackers coach Seth Wallace started calling Moss “Dirtman.” So everyone started calling him “Dirtman.”

Moss was self-aware enough to realize the entire building was picking on him. He was self-assured enough not to care. So he doubled down, as friend and longtime Hawkeyes teammate Jack Koerner remembered. Moss would come over to Koerner’s house after practice to watch a movie and crash on his leather couch, shirtless. Unshowered from the morning’s practice. Stinking up the joint.

“He’s gonna be him,” Koerner said. “That’s just the way that all of us describe him. And you love him for it, and you hate him for it. He’s never gonna deviate from being Riley Moss.

“And everybody who ever has met him will tell you — they’ve never met anybody like Riley Moss.”

Three years into his time in Denver, he is still Riley Moss. He still strolls up to chat with reporters in a backwards cap. He’s trimmed the hair somewhat. But Moss has now grown out a scraggly Obi-Wan-Kenobi-style beard, which strongly split his old Iowa buddies when he trekked home this summer.

“Some guys were like, ‘Dude, you do not look like you belong playing the cornerback position in the National Football League,'” Koerner recalled.

He never has. Moss knows the story and the stereotypes: first white corner to start in the NFL since 2003. He’s had a “runt-of-the-litter” attitude, as Koerner described, since growing up dreaming of playing outside corner in central Iowa. He was a two-star recruit who began his career at Iowa as a preferred walk-on, a track star with little refined football sense. Moss has the word “underdog” tattooed on his ribs, with the definition scrawled underneath.

He has now become one of the most important pieces of a Broncos defense with championship hopes, primarily because of the guy he’s next to. A guy whose story couldn’t be more different. Pat Surtain II, the NFL’s reigning defensive player of the year, was made for this: The son of a Pro Bowl corner, the No. 1 corner in his recruiting class and the gem of Nick Saban’s Alabama program.

Every piece of Surtain’s game has been carved from marble since he was a teenager. Eventually, his high school DB coach and longtime trainer Chad Wilson started calling him “The Prototype.”

“He’s a technician,” nickel Ja’Quan McMillian said. “He just does the same thing over and over again.”

The 25-year-old has now become so consistent that NFL teams avoid him like never before. The Broncos’ top corner was targeted once by the Titans in Week 1. Such a distribution means opposing quarterbacks will look to the other side of the field nonstop. Manning the mainland across from Surtain Island requires resilience, as defensive coordinator Vance Joseph noted in September. It requires self-belief and a complete lack of fear.

Enter Dirtman.

“If they make one play,” Joseph said, “he’s going to make two.”

•••

Early on in Moss’s Iowa career, he and the rest of the Hawkeyes’ DBs were sitting in a meeting room after practice, watching cut-ups. Hard-nosed defensive coordinator Phil Parker threw on a clip of a Moss play where he’d gambled, jumped a route and just managed to tip a ball away.

Parker pointed out that Moss would’ve given up a touchdown if the risk hadn’t paid off. Moss, as Koerner remembered, tossed back a saying his Iowa teammates would come to know all too well.

“Scared money don’t make no money,” Moss replied.

“Well, when you’re gambling with my money,” Parker retorted, as Koerner recalled, “you need to be able to learn to be protective with it.”

At the same time Moss was rocking an earring and quoting Jeezy, Surtain was rounding into an All-American at Alabama. The kid was just good at everything from “Day One, at least,” as Wilson put it. He came from Florida’s American Heritage High, where the head coach (Mike Rumpf), defensive coordinator (Surtain Sr.) and DBs coach (Wilson) had all played DB in the NFL. Fellow cornerbacks Marco Wilson and Tyson Campbell also went on to play in the NFL.

Surtain worked alongside greatness every day of his career. From American Heritage to Alabama, it molded a corner who has developed technique so perfect that Bengals star wideout Ja’Marr Chase, former great Chad Ochocinco and fellow Bronco Courtland Sutton went viral this summer trying to figure out how to beat him. Every rep is the same: Eyes zeroed in on a receiver’s hips, long slide-steps, firm jams at the point of attack.

“He’s the kind of thing that batting champs in baseball are made out of,” said Wilson, who’s trained Surtain every offseason. “Like, a Tony Gwynn, or a Wade Boggs, or any of those kind of guys that have flirted with .400 and just were consistent batting-title winners. Because you have to be so consistent as a batter in baseball.”

Surtain’s challenge now is to “stay sharp,” even as the ball avoids him, the corner said Wednesday. And this Broncos stretch is the first time in the DPOY’s life where he’s been truly isolated, Wilson said. High school teammate Campbell was the No. 2 corner in the country to Surtain’s No. 1. In his All-American season at Alabama in 2020, Surtain’s CB2 was Josh Jobe, the No. 6 corner in the country in that same 2018 class. All carried pedigree. All commanded respect.

And then there’s Moss, who had a runway to understand “what it takes to be a professional,” as Parker reflected.

Koerner was a second-year walk-on safety when Moss came to Iowa in 2018. And Koerner didn’t much like him. Moss was gifted with straight-line quickness, but he was hobbled by the fact that he didn’t really know much. He started six games as a freshman off pure athleticism, but he had to turn around and glance at the safety for instruction on most every play.

Parker assigned Koerner to get Moss up to speed. The problem: Parker was also grooming Moss as a safety. At times, Koerner stood behind Moss in walkthroughs, helped him with positioning, and asked himself what the heck he was doing.

Dude, this guy doesn’t know anything, Koener thought. Why am I helping him out? I’m training him to take my spot.

The building knew Moss was an excellent athlete. The building didn’t know if Moss would be an excellent football player. One preceded the other, as Koerner described. He got torched for three touchdowns in a loss to Purdue as a freshman, lost his job and started all of one game the next year. He was not a popular man in Iowa’s fanbase.

Three years later, he broke up 11 passes as a senior, became one of the staples of Iowa’s program and was drafted in the third round by the Broncos. And he and Koerner had become best buds.

“Everybody kinda knew that it was only a matter of time until — you show this guy enough offenses and you get him in the defensive playbook enough, he’s gonna be extremely well-rounded,” Koerner said.

There are hardly any stars attached to Moss’ name. He did not come from a cornerback factory. He was knocked off course several times.

He’s wired perfectly, because of it, to line up opposite The Prototype.

“He’s got, like, a bulletproof confidence about him,” Koerner said. “They could make him wear a Speedo out there, and he’d still be playing just as well.”

•••

They had their fun in the summers back at Iowa. “The boys,” as Koerner called them, wandered up to a lake house for weekend benders. They had their nights. And Moss was never one to say no if you needed a guy to have fun with, Koerner cracked.

“My favorite memories of him,” former Iowa safety Quinn Schulte said, “I probably can’t share with you.”

Still, the life of the party rose each morning, ran wind-sprints up hills, and sweated it out in eight-minute ab workouts.

“I’ve never seen somebody who can just, like, show up the next day with a hangover, and he’ll just throw in a chew in his lip and he’ll be the most athletic guy on the field,” Koerner said. “Like, no stretch, no nothing.

“Just show up, lace up the cleats, not even brush the sleep out of his eye, and just be the most twitchy athlete out there.”

No switch flips. Moss is just wired to go, in all aspects. He lives “every day like his last,” as Koerner said. It stands to reason that Moss loves Joseph’s scheme in Denver, as Schulte said, with its heavy doses of man-to-man.

And Moss loves the challenge of playing opposite Surtain, too.

“It makes it fun to come in to work, knowing it’s on me,” Moss said. “I’m going to be on an island, and what can I do? That’s what I think makes this game so beautiful, and why I love the position that I’m in.”

In Week 1, as the Titans moved No. 1 wideout Calvin Ridley around the formation to get him away from Surtain, Moss chased after rookie No. 2 wideout Elic Ayomanor like a puppy after a Frisbee. He was targeted eight times against Tennessee, tied for the fifth-most of any corner in the league, according to Pro Football Focus.

He allowed three catches for just 21 yards and warded off two deep balls to Ayomanor on the same drive.

“I think Riley is very mentally tough,” safety Brandon Jones said. “And I think it’s needed at corner.”

In late December, after returning from a month-long absence with an MCL injury, Moss got shredded by Bengals star WR2 Tee Higgins for 101 yards and two touchdowns. It singlehandedly changed the perception of his sophomore year in Denver, after a strong start to his 2024. But Moss was blatant — quite blatant — about owning a bad day, and went about his offseason with a purpose.

He wanted to get stronger on 50-50 balls. Increase his aggressiveness at the point of attack. So back in Iowa, he trained daily with Koerner and Iowa State alumnus Jake Hummel.

There were no secrets here. No dedicated outside trainers. No incisive overhaul of Moss’ methods. His buddies just … barked at him in the weight room.

“His was kind of a — rag-a-ma-tag, melting pot of a lot of different guys,” Koerner said. “No one guy could take credit other than Riley himself.”

Before he left Iowa, he had dinner with Parker. The Iowa defensive coordinator watched Moss work one-on-one with former teammate Cooper DeJean, now with the Philadelphia Eagles, at the Hawkeyes’ facility that summer. Parker saw Moss’ maturity in his footwork — smooth rather than hurried. And Parker saw maturity in his demeanor at that dinner — now a true goldfish who could shrug off any previous play.

“He can process things faster now,” Parker reflected, “and understand what he has to do.”

Surtain was born to dominate. Moss was born to scrap.

Still the Prototype, and still the Dirtman, embracing their roles on separate islands in Denver.

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