With 11 Catches, 49ers’ Rice Has a Remarkable Recovery : Ankle Doesn’t Stop Receiver From Making Big Plays

It may have been the most talked-about, fussed-over, reported-on, overexposed ankle since Marilyn Monroe stepped on a subway grating.

Actually, Jerry Rice’s right ankle is a lot like yours--a bony thing wrapped in ligaments that is the most important friend a dangling foot could ever know.

But there the comparisons end. Rice’s ankle went out for a pass in practice this week and made headlines. He tweaked it on Monday, and the stock market almost crashed.

The San Francisco 49ers worried about the ankle. So did the media. Reports on the ankle came in hourly. People spied on it. If the ankle was ready to fall off, as some were led to believe, why was it seen dancing with other little ankles at a local Miami hot spot one night last week?

Even sore ankles gotta have fun, Rice said.

Well, it turns out the ankle was fine. What a shock. Jerry Rice and all his assembled body parts showed up on time at Joe Robbie Stadium on Sunday and led the 49ers to a Super Bowl championship.

Rice, who was held out of considerable practice time this week, held out no more. He stole Super Bowl XXIII with 11 receptions and 215 yards. He took it from the Cincinnati Bengals with one-handed catches, leaping catches, sprawling catches, touchdown catches.

On his 14-yard scoring reception in the fourth quarter, a fade pattern toward the left corner, Rice made the catch inside the 5 and instinctively stuck the nose of the ball over the plane of the goal line as his momentum carried him out of bounds.

“I’ve never made a catch like that,” Rice said afterward.

Rice kind of makes them up as he goes along. This was no Achilles’ ankle here. This was the game’s most valuable player, a guy who set a Super Bowl yardage record by slicing his way through a sleek Cincinnati secondary.

Yeah, but did you notice the limp?

Dennis Green, the 49ers’ receivers coach, swore afterward that Rice’s ankle was no better than 90% and would take 2 or 3 months to recover fully.

“He heals fast, he always has,” Green said of Rice.

Which is why an ankle can go dancing on Wednesday and stomping on Sunday.

“He told me he was only going up and back on the dance floor,” Green said. “Not side to side.”

Rice saved the fancy steps for Cincinnati, especially when it counted. His two biggest catches of the day were not his most spectacular. They were two receptions--of 17 and 27 yards--on his team’s dramatic last-minute drive to Super Bowl glory. One of Rice’s greatest qualities remains his craving for the ball in pressure situations, a time when others might dive for cover or volunteer to block.

“He wants to be in that position,” Green said. “Jerry has never been a guy who didn’t want to be in that position.”

Well, Jerry was ankle deep in it on Sunday, never dreaming of the moment he might become the greatest Super Bowl receiver since Pittsburgh’s Lynn Swann.

“This is something I will remember the rest of my life,” Rice said. “Lynn Swann was an idol. It really would amaze me how he could fly through the air and make those catches. I’ll never forget the one versus Dallas. It was the greatest catch I’ve ever seen.”

Rice can add a few more to his Best Catch list--his own--and perhaps explain again this certain lack of speed he possesses.

“It’s deceptive speed,” Rice said.

In other words, a bag of goods Rice has sold the rest of the league. This deceptive speed, he says, is the type that lures cornerbacks into thinking they can cover him. And they really do think it. This week, Bengal corners Lewis Billups and Eric Thomas didn’t exactly bend down and pay homage to King Rice.

Afterward, Rice might have cruelly described the cornerbacks’ strategy as deceptive coverage.

“I have a lot of respect for Thomas and Billups,” he said. “But they did a lot of talking about what Jerry Rice couldn’t do. In situations like that, I try not to get intimidated. I don’t talk a game, I just play it.”

Billups, who was burned by Rice all afternoon, defended himself afterward.

“Somebody had asked me who I thought was better, Eddie (Brown) or Rice,” he said. “And before the game, I said Eddie. Now and after the game, I still think Eddie. Jerry had a great game and Jerry made some great catches.”

And Eddie Brown made 4 catches.

What Rice does you don’t measure with a stopwatch, Green said. Rice can cat-and-mouse a cornerback out of the league. He runs picture-perfect patterns and explodes with bursts of speed when the situation calls for it. And the whole time you think you have him covered. Deceptive speed. See?

“A lot of defensive backs think they can check me,” Rice said. “But as I said earlier this week, this is not a track meet. This is a football game.”

And this one, in particular, may be etched in football minds forever.

“I’ve said all along that Jerry Rice is the best wide receiver ever to play this game,” 49er safety Ronnie Lott said. “Yes, ever. I’ve never seen a guy that has those kinds of tools come to work as hard as he does.”

Bengal receiver Cris Collinsworth almost agreed.

“Jerry Rice hasn’t been playing long enough to be called the greatest receiver ever to play this game,” he said. “But maybe by sometime next week he will have earned it.”

And just wait until that ankle heals next year. Then you’ll see the real Rice.

“Rice had a legitimately sprained ankle,” retiring center Randy Cross said. “To make a comeback like that was amazing.”

OK.