Extra Effort Paid Off for Other Guy : Rams: After Aaron Cox pulled a hamstring, Flipper Anderson got his chance. He went on to set an NFL receiving record.
Two weeks ago, Aaron Cox watched teammate Flipper Anderson set an NFL single-game reception record while running pass routes that Cox should have been running.
It kind of sums up Cox’s season. And it’s all because he lunged for a pass thrown in a pre-training camp workout last July. Cox didn’t need to lunge, but lunge he did, in the pursuit of no record, to the roar of no crowd.
His right hamstring made a funny sound.
“It kind of popped a little bit,” Cox said. “It wasn’t even major or anything. It kind of twinged, it made a little noise.”
Cox never considered that one barely audible pluck from his hamstring could make Flipper Anderson a legend in his own time.
Cox was the first-round pick in 1988, Anderson a second-rounder. Cox was the starter a season ago, Anderson the backup.
Then, pop goes a hamstring. The Rams were calling Cox’s injury day-to-day at first, no big thing. Anderson moved in to Cox’s starting spot, temporarily of course. Cox practiced on, with poor results. His leg kept getting worse. Anderson kept getting better. Anderson set his record.
It almost happened that fast in Aaron Cox’s mind. First, he lost his starting job, then the opportunity of a lifetime.
If not for a twinge, he might have been running Anderson’s routes that night against New Orleans. Anderson was running them in place of the injured Henry Ellard. Cox was supposed to be playing instead of Anderson again this year, if not for one meaningless, summer pass route.
“If I was in that situation, I could have done the same thing,” Cox said. “Now I’m not sitting here and saying I wish that was me, but if I was cast in that role, to get that many balls thrown my way, I think I could do the same thing.”
Fifteen catches for 336 yards.
Cox doesn’t think about it too much. Just every other minute. So what happened here?
Last season, Cox held counseling sessions for Anderson, the then-unpolished rookie who once went five games in his first season without catching a pass.
“He’d always come in and say, ‘Man, I don’t get any passes,’ ” Cox said. “And I’d say, ‘Don’t worry about it; your day is going to come.’ ”
Did it ever.
“That’s the same thing he’s telling me now,” Cox said.
Cox has grown to view his season in a larger context, having allowed fate its proper place. If this wasn’t meant to be his season, so be it. Cox is the Rams’ seventh-leading receiver with 17 catches for 306 yards. Anderson is three yards short of 1,000 yards.
And if anyone is going to break an NFL record in your place, why not the guy you pal around with?
“Maybe it wasn’t meant for me to be the starter all the time,” Cox reasoned. “I was happy for him anyway, because me and Flipper are tight. If it was someone else who I wasn’t close to, someone who just came in, I probably wouldn’t be as happy for that person as I am for Flipper. That also helped me deal with it, because I know the kind of person he is. He’s not the kind of person to be rubbing it in or make a bad statement about me.”
And in fact, Cox’s day did come, just as Anderson predicted.
In last week’s 35-31 victory over Dallas, with Ellard out again and the Cowboys determined to cut Anderson off at the pass route, Cox set single-game career highs with five catches for 103 yards and two touchdowns.
“I was on cloud nine,” Cox said of the game. “In college I had bigger games than that, but as far as gratification (goes), that was the biggest game for me.”
And a portent of better things, perhaps. What do opponents do now, double-team Ellard or Anderson? If they do, who’s covering Cox?
“I think the guy that maybe will benefit the most is Aaron,” Ram Coach John Robinson said this week. “We may see Aaron with an equal number of catches to the other two, because I think I’d cover those other two guys.”
Strangely, Ellard’s hamstring problem hasn’t slowed the Rams’ passing attack. In the two games Ellard has missed, Anderson and Cox have combined for 571 yards in 28 catches, one more than the two totaled in 12 previous games.
“Because Henry gets so much of the attention, and the passes, people don’t realize that me and Flip can indeed step in and keep the pace up,” Cox said. “That’s the main thing people should realize.”
And that’s what made Anderson’s record-setting performance against New Orleans so important, Cox said.
“All week long, everyone was talking about Henry being out,” he said. “It was, ‘How are you guys going to do?’ And we just kind of stepped in and did the same thing that Henry would have done.”
Cox said his hamstring was only 80% much of the season and still isn’t completely healed.
Ram Notes
Henry Ellard practiced Thursday and was listed as probable for Monday night’s game against San Francisco in Anaheim Stadium. . . . Cornerback Cliff Hicks (strained knee) also is probable. . . . The 49ers list nose tackle Pete Kugler (back) as questionable, fullback Keith Henderson (knee), tight ends Brent Jones (shoulder) and Wesley Walls (knee) and quarterback Joe Montana (rib) as probable. Montana practiced Thursday for the first time, and afterward said he’d be ready to play.
