His Name’s Not Catchy, but Hands Are
What Henry Ellard of the Rams needs is not a new juke move, or a loose zone to buttonhook, or a safety who will take a head fake, what Henry needs is a new name.
I mean, what kind of a name is Henry Ellard for one of the great magicians in the annals of catching the football? A phantom of that opera?
Henry Ellard sounds like a guy who does your income taxes or reads your meters or makes loans.
Henry makes touchdowns. Therefore, he should be named, “Crazy Legs” or “Long Gone” or “the Five O’Clock Flyer.” Anything but Henry.
Of course, on the field, Ellard hopes to be overlooked. That’s part of the game plan. But this is Hollywood, not Green Bay. A guy who breaks the L.A. Rams’ single-season record for receptions should be a flash guy. He should be Crazy Legs or Horrible Henry or Eighty-Yard Ellard.
Last year this guy caught more passes (86) in a season than any Ram who ever played. Now, you’re talking Tom Fears, Crazy Legs Hirsch, Jim Benton, Carroll Dale, Boyd Dowler, Bucky Pope, Harold Jackson. You’re talking virtuosity, some of the slickest-footed, surest-handed pass-catchers who ever lined up wide.
They used to call Pope “the Catawba Claw,” but Ellard doesn’t require that a ball hit him in the hands--or chest. The same area code will do. He caught a pass in the Ram-Atlanta game Sunday that he never really saw, only heard. It came in the second period, on a fourth-down play the Rams had to have to win. The Rams’ quarterback, Jim Everett, with six yards to go on the Atlanta 34, launched a pass that was like fourth-class mail addressed, “To Henry Ellard or Current Occupant.”
Everett knew if Ellard was in the vicinity, he’d get it. “If it stays in the air, Henry catches it,” his coach, John Robinson, has said.
It did. And he did. The record shows Ellard caught no touchdown passes Sunday. But without that catch, of a ball he never saw till he went up to wrest it away from two defenders, the score would have been 10-7 and the ball turned over to Atlanta. It was more important than the touchdown pass from the seven, two plays later.
Only Hirsch has caught passes for more yards in a season--1,495 in 1951. Ellard’s receptions last year totaled 1,414. That was, incidentally, more yards than San Francisco’s Jerry Rice put up. Ellard also had more touchdowns than San Francisco’s marvel last year.
So, why isn’t he “the Claw” or “the Antelope” or any other of the alliterations so favored by the psalmists of the press?
Henry Ellard was as gifted a collegiate wide receiver as ever ran a route in California, which is lousy with them. But he never caught passes for USC, UCLA, one of the Arizona schools or even Stanford. He went to Fresno State, where they had heard of him. He was at the time an Olympic hopeful in the triple jump who once posted a 56-5 1/2 (in the wind) at a time when 56-11 would win you the gold medal. He caught 138 passes for 39 touchdowns in his college career and was good enough to keep even Stephone Paige (Kansas City Chiefs) in a backup role.
The Rams drafted him in the second round, but for some reason, they saw him as a kick returner. This is like casting John Wayne as a butler, but the facts of the matter were that almost the only footballs Ellard was called upon to catch were kicked to him.
The other teams soon found out this was not a good idea--Ellard ran one punt back 83 yards for a touchdown, another one 81 and another 72--and the Rams came to the conclusion that it might be a good idea for them to get the ball to Ellard, and not wait for the other guys to do it.
Even so, even longtime Ram fans were startled when this upstart wideout held out for more money and missed nine games in 1986. “Who does he thing he is--Hirsch?” was the reaction.
As a matter of fact, he did. Ellard knew he was good. So did the league’s cornerbacks. It was the rest of the world that had to be convinced.
Holding out is one way to do it. Having a catchy nickname is another way to do it. Ask “the Boz”--wherever he is.
Breaking the Ram record for season receptions is a third way. There isn’t a cornerback in the league who couldn’t supply a suitable nickname for Ellard now, but you’d have to bleep it. Even the other wide receiver on the team answers to the nickname, “Flipper.” Henry is just H. Ellard, Esq. Or “that blankety-blank Ellard!”
He threw another impeccable game into the bowl run Sunday. Eight receptions for 165 yards. Quality yards. He caught seven of them in the first half when the Rams, to all intents and purposes, put the game away. The second half, he had more people around him than Noriega. He still caught a 15-yard pass to put the ball in position for the insurance field goal by the Rams, who won, 26-14.
Receiving is not solely a function of speed, although the old triple-jumper has plenty of that. Nor is it quickness, merely.
As a triple-jumper, Ellard can hover. He can go up quicker and hang longer. But receiving is a con game. In effect, you’re getting the guy--or guys--playing you to put money in a dry hole, buy swamp property. You cultivate the innocent look, the preoccupied stare of a guy who is trying to bluff a pot with a pair of fours.
No man running backward can go as fast as Henry Ellard can running forward. “But it’s not only speed and quickness,” Ellard was saying in the locker room after the game. “It’s experience. It’s trying out what will work and what won’t.”
Sometimes, he admits, you have to be a total bunco artist. “You run a route knowing you’re a decoy. But you have to get the other guy to think the ball’s coming any minute.”
With 35 catches in five games, does he think 100 catches in a season are possible? Only Art Monk (Washington Redskins, 1984), Charley Hennigan (Houston Oilers, 1964) and Lionel Taylor (Denver Broncos, 1961) belong to that exclusive 100 club.
“It’s definitely possible, even probable,” asserts Ellard. “I wouldn’t have said it was possible a few years ago. When we had Eric (Dickerson) here, the emphasis was on running. It has shifted. Of course, you have to know, the more successful you are, the more you catch, (then) the more attention you draw, the more coverage.”
If he catches the 100, the problem of the nickname will be solved--whether it draws a crowd on the field or not, it will off it. He’ll be “Century” Ellard or “Henry the Hundredth.”
A FULL STABLE
When Greg Bell was injured Sunday, the Rams had three able replacements behind him. Chris Dufresne’s story, Page 5.