Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 7, 1994 TAG: 9409070126
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY RATTO SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO LENGTH: Long
Players, coaches and victims all dogpiled atop each other trying to find the right super-duper-superlative for Jerry Rice. Some clever turn of phrase that would somehow say it all, that would put another coat of platinum on the platinum.
The best, though, was Rice's himself. Not a boast, just a small detail about his record-breaking 127th touchdown that he hadn't related before.
``They told me before I went back in that we would take one crack at it, and that was it,''the San Francisco 49ers wide receiver said as he struggled to make his shirt travel the last foot or so up over his sore left shoulder.
``Right before we got the ball back, [the coaches] called me from the press box, and I thought, `Jerry, that's it,' but they said, `You get one more shot,' and I knew that was going to be my only opportunity. One play.''
And he went out and, being Jerry Rice, he did it. Touchdown on command. In the end, he didn't call his shot - everyone else did.
One play, at the end of a game when he usually would have been watching from the sideline. The 49ers dismantled the highly regarded Los Angeles Raiders 44-14 on Monday night in a game that, like the losses by Buffalo, Houston and Denver on Sunday, will force a lot of rethinking about what the AFC has to offer this football season.
A simple post pattern, against Los Angeles cornerback Albert Lewis, who spent most of his career with Kansas City as one of the game's best cornerbacks, and Rice had passed Jim Brown as the NFL's career touchdowns leader.
Steve Young's pass was underthrown, the result of Young being smacked at full backpedal by defensive end Scott Davis just after releasing the ball, but Rice adjusted to it at the 5, jumped in front of Lewis to make the catch at the 2, held the ball as Lewis tried to whack it from his hands and fell into the end zone, beneath Lewis and Eddie Anderson.
``I was too busy running to see the ball,'' Lewis said. ``I kind of lost the ball in the lights. He made a good adjustment, and he held on to it. That was the thing. It was a real good catch. I think they might have caught us napping.''
Interesting notion, that last one. The 49ers were leading 37-14 with barely four minutes to play, and Young and Rice still were playing. Under any other circumstances, they would have been on the sideline, mugging for ABC and laughing it up at the destruction of yet another reputation.
They wanted the record, though. To get it over with, to be done with it, and to do it under optimal circumstances. As Rice put it, ``I couldn't think of a better predicament - Monday night, the whole entire world watching, the Raiders, at home, for all the fans here.''
A record, it must be said, very few people had given much thought to until Rice brought it to everyone's attention in one last grandiose gesture. Brown, the greatest offensive player of his era and by many accounts the greatest running back the game has known, had scored 126 touchdowns in nine years, a staggering achievement.
But at the start of last season, his ninth year on the San Francisco payroll, Rice began dropping hints about catching Brown, to the puzzlement of all. Brown wasn't a wide receiver, and nobody outside of Cleveland could have told you how many touchdowns Brown had scored in his career. For all football's dependency upon numbers, statistics don't hold that much allure.
Rice, though, knew that though we all agree he is the greatest wide receiver in NFL history, he also was aware that nothing says it like math. So, to score more touchdowns than Brown in nine years plus one game, while handling the ball roughly a third as often, is something our lying eyes couldn't possibly deny.
It speaks louder than all the kind things said about him:
``The thing is, if he weren't so talented, you'd all be calling him a blue-collar guy because he works so hard at it,'' Young said. ``There aren't enough of these kinds of guys doing great things, showing how to do them. He did this on work.''
``Anything he gets, he's earned,'' Lewis said. ``We made some mistakes in the secondary tonight, but he earned everything he got.''
``He's obviously the greatest wide receiver to play the game,'' said George Seifert, the Niners' coach. ``We were all privileged to see one of the great moments in football history, what Jerry did. That was a special moment for any football fan, let alone any 49ers fan.''
``I had plane reservations for Kansas City for Sunday's game], because I just knew it was going to happen there,'' said Rice's wife, Jackie. ``I had no clue it would happen tonight. He had no clue.''
That much is true, insofar as one never knows when the magic will manifest itself in such abundance, and that the Raiders are not usually the victims of such moments.
``Everybody was talking about how great their receivers are,'' Rice laughed later. ``They forgot about John Taylor and Jerry Rice.''
No, the Raiders didn't forget, so they didn't need reminding. They just happened to be, well, in the way when it happened. One more sparkling vignette to help explain what it was fans have watched for the past decade. The night he scored on command, they'll call it. The night the numbers finally agreed with the truth.
Keywords:
FOOTBALL
by CNB