A LOOK AT TWO OF SUNDAY’S RAIDER, RAM OPPONENTS : STEVE LARGENT : Seahawk Does a Slow Burn on Speed Rap

Steve Largent has tolerated a certain Northwest mythology, namely that any fair-minded glacier would have to spot him 30 yards in a timed 40-yard dash.

If he were any slower, the local thinking goes, he’d be flagged for loitering on every post pattern. Pigeons often roost in his blond locks, the press reports.

How slow is he? He’s so slow the Seahawks employ a man just to remove moss from his north side.

Seriously, folks, I wanna tell you . . . you been a great crowd, but Steve Largent just isn’t all that slow. Not really.

“You ever hear a player say he’s slow?” teammate David Hughes asks.

More to the point, did you ever hear a cornerback say Largent is slow?

Here’s what Raider cornerback Lester Hayes once said of Largent: “Ninety-five percent of the receivers in the NFL can be shut out. But there is no feasible form or fashion that Mike Haynes or myself should be able to shut the great Steve Largent out.”

Nobody has yet. Largent once went the first 58 minutes of a game before he caught a pass, but that’s as close as it has been. In 128 consecutive games, stretching back to a four-yard pass he caught in the Seahawks’ first season 11 years ago, he has always caught at least one pass, and that’s a record.

The obligatory numbers: Largent, who last week broke Harold Carmichael’s record for pass receptions in consecutive games, has moved into third place in the National Football League’s all-time reception list. His 644 catches leave him five behind the retired Charley Taylor and a whole lot behind San Diego’s Charlie Joiner. Largent is fourth in yardage and he’s getting better. Last year, at 31, he had his best season, catching 79 passes for 1,287 yards.

So he’s not slowing down. Well, of course he’s not. Because if he were any slower, free safeties would mistake him for statuary (see: pigeon joke). As it is, he’s so slow the coaches can use carbon dating to time him. Hey, when the scouts came down to Tulsa 12 years ago, how do you think they clocked him? A guy sat in a chair ripping pages off a calender. Seriously. . . .

Did we already say he’s not all that slow? Hayes did? Sort of? Let’s give Largent a shot at it. It’s a sunny day at Seahawk camp, where visiting press is shooed from the field so as not to scout the team’s calisthenics and thus destroy NFL parity, and Largent is still on the field as his teammates all leave. He’s the last guy off. He’s so sloooow.

“Slow?” he says, kind of agitated. “Yeah, that’s been the standard rap, hasn’t it.”

It’s been more than that, judging by Largent’s clip file, a foot high as collected by the team, and each Largent story chock full of slows and smalls. It’s kind of gospel by now. Writers, evidently, would prefer to pay a small fine than avoid calling Largent slow and small.

Largent, so wholesome that he once posed with a milk mustache for a dairy association ad and nobody could muster so much as a snicker, can almost get upset about this. “If you took the size and speed of all receivers, you’d find that I’d be closer to the standard than somebody like James Lofton is,” he protested mildly. “There just aren’t that many prototype wide receivers. In fact, a lot of them are just like me.”

That said, let us agree that Largent is not dazzling anybody with his physical gifts. If he’s not exactly as slow as clips insist, he is neither as fast as he thinks. He is getting by on something else.

Raymond Berry, to whom Largent is most often compared, marvels at what Largent has accomplished. “When I was playing in this league, I’d hate to have had to make a living against Lester Hayes,” Berry, the New England Patriot coach, said recently. “Yet Steve plays him twice a year. I just don’t think there are any corners who really stop Largent. They never have.”

And why is that?

“He definitely has the instincts,” Berry continued. “Also a great mastery of his craft.”

You will not get much more analysis than that. Largent is good, runs precise patterns and has good hands. He is disciplined, hard-working, steady, healthy--all that stuff.

Let Steve Moore, offensive coordinator, have a go at it: “He has great body control, and great hands. He also has great concentration. If you talk in terms of straight line speed or jumping ability, he probably doesn’t do that very well. He has what I call football speed--the ability to separate himself from a defender with short bursts.”

Also, said Moore, “He’s got some magic in him.”

The magic wasn’t always apparent. Not even to Largent, who never dreamed of playing pro football. He was a good receiver at Tulsa, but scouts were leery enough of his speed--he reportedly was timed at 4.9 in the 40, which is good for military convoys, bad for wide receivers--that he wasn’t drafted until the fourth round.

And in Houston’s rookie camp, he was unimpressive enough that Bum Phillips sent him home to Oklahoma. The Oilers got a chance to unload him onto the expansion Seahawks and did so immediately. “Worst trade I ever made,” Phillips has said.

Largent is kinder. “From what he saw, I would have cut me, too,” he said. “It was a bad training camp for me.”

He’s had better, like 11 of them. “A lot of it’s timing,” he said, agreeing that he could just as easily have 0 catches in the NFL as 644. “Coming here when I did, I was in the right place at the right time,” he said.

Most of the years were spent in anonymity. It was by dint of his accumulated good work, the sheer weight of consistency, that he has finally alerted fans to his achievements. No flash, no dash, but finally a lot of cash--a three-year contract for $2.1 million.

And this consecutive-game thing, that sure put his name in the papers. Not since Mount St. Helens has a Northwest phenomenon been so celebrated.

“I’m just tired talking about that streak,” Largent said. “I’m glad I did it, glad for the attention, but it’s not that big a thing. I mean, I’m not bragging, but just going Sunday to Sunday, it will be a real rare game when I don’t catch a pass.”

Monday’s game didn’t seem so rare. Boyd’s anticipated catch had drawn so much attention that when he finally did get one, a teammate reportedly said: “Now maybe we can go ahead and win the game.”

Certainly Largent is happy to have it behind. Not because of the tension--he says he felt none--but because of a nagging press. He entertained all questions, but it kind of got old. Just got bigger than he wanted.

With Largent, though, that happens. Like when he was working summers in a police forensic lab, doing detail work with blood specimens, for example.

For a couple of years it was reported that he worked in the coroner’s office, which was technically correct. But Largent did little to correct the popular assumption that he was actually working with Quincy. It was like being slow. “After 10-11 years,” he says wearily, “I have no interest in refuting it. Slow and small. . . . “

Obviously, he’s not all that slow. However, he is very, very small. Teeny, tiny. He’s so small--5-10 and 184--that the team gets his numbers with a yard stick and a produce scale. He buys movie tickets at half price. He can still play Sneezy in the team’s annual “Snow White” pageant. Water boys bully him.

He’s so small, in fact, that he can catch 644 passes and still be overlooked.