Turner Is Also Seahawks’ Receiver, and He’s Catching Up With Largent

It was typical of the Seattle Seahawks that Darryl Turner caught a touchdown pass Sunday and Steve Largent did not. Turner, in his second season in the NFL, already has caught one-fourth as many touchdown passes as Largent has in 10 years.

This seems hard to believe--particularly when you realize that Largent now needs to make only three catches of any kind, touchdown or no, to pass Fred Biletnikoff as the sixth-leading NFL receiver of all-time. And one more catch after that to move past Harold Carmichael into fifth place.

For some reason, tucked as he is into this particular corner of the country, in the Alaska suburbs, Largent has not gotten much recognition as one of pro football’s greats. When someone wondered after Sunday’s 33-3 shellacking of the Raiders whether football fans outside Seattle had discovered him yet, Largent’s reply was: “I don’t know. I haven’t asked them.”

At the rate he is going, Largent is moving up the statistical ladder, a little at a time. But it is going to take a Super Bowl appearance to get him into the national spotlight.

Darryl Turner may have found a shortcut. He is quickly becoming Mr. Touchdown.

Seattle’s starting wide receiver opposite Largent, Turner has somehow turned into the man who gets the ball into the end zone. Some way. Any way. Even on a ricochet off the enemy cornerback’s shoulder pads, which is the way he scored Sunday against the Raiders.

Largent has 587 career receptions. Turner has 55.

But Turner, in 25 NFL games, already has 19 touchdown catches. Largent, in 139 games, has 76.

Largent has caught 42 passes this season. Turner has caught 20.

But Turner has nine touchdown catches this season--one a game--to Largent’s four.

Largent says: “I’ve always thought that when my career is over, that’s when my pass-catching records will mean something to me.”

But Turner says: “If I can get some sort of touchdown record this season, hey, so be it.”

Only running back Roger Craig of the San Francisco 49ers has scored more touchdowns this season than Turner has. This would not be surprising at all if Turner were one of those wide receivers who is constantly getting the ball. But he is not.

There are dozens of receivers who have doubled or nearly doubled Turner’s total receptions. Todd Christensen of the Raiders, the league’s leading receiver going into Sunday’s game, has caught 31 more balls than Turner has.

Turner shrugs this off. He says he is more concerned about his concentration, because for reasons he cannot explain, the second-year man from Michigan State believes he is not paying enough attention to what he is doing.

“I can’t figure it out. My concentration level is low, man, low. They threw me one ball today and I blew it, just blew it. Didn’t know where I was. Didn’t know where it was.”

This was not the case in the third period, when Seattle already was sitting on a 26-3 lead. From his own 38, quarterback Dave Krieg lobbed a long one into the end zone and Turner took off after it, with Raider cornerback Mike Haynes matching him stride for stride. Haynes got his hands on it, and then the ball struck him on the shoulder pads.

Turner snatched it away for the touchdown.

It was such a high-speed chase that Turner and Haynes were still clutched to one another as they ran beyond the end zone and into a Kingdome tunnel. “I wasn’t sure who it was or what it was,” Turner said, exaggerating a little as usual. “I was just waiting for whatever it was that had me to let me go.”

Turner caught only one other pass all day. He now has nine touchdown catches and 11 non-touchdown catches. He has so few catches that he can keep track of them, minute by minute.

When, for example, someone in the locker room 10 minutes after the game asked him if he could explain why he had only 19 catches this season, Turner talked for a few seconds about it, then said: “And I got 20 catches, by the way.”

Largent would need a pocket calculator to count his. The three he caught Sunday did not figure in the scoring, but he professed happiness at having grabbed even that many. “When you consider cornerbacks, Mike Haynes and Lester Hayes are the best duo in the league,” Largent said, “and maybe the best the league has ever produced.”

Now 31 years old and 596 yards short of 10,000 for his career, Largent has covered a lot of ground since his college days at Tulsa.

“I’ve always said it would be many years after I’ve stopped playing that I’ll be able to look back at the mark I made on the NFL,” Largent said. “For now, all I know is that they pay me well and I get to catch passes, which is what I like to do. I like to catch passes. So, I guess I’ll keep doing it for a while.”

He has to. Somebody’s gaining on him.