Perseverance Pays Off for San Francisco’s Watters : 49ers: Second-year tailback’s running is the perfect complement to the team’s always-potent passing attack.
Playing with the big boys didn’t always come easy for Ricky Watters, certainly not as easy as it did Sunday against the Rams. When he was 7 and playing tackle football with the 12- and 13-year-olds on a lumpy field adjacent to a lumber yard near his home in Harrisburg, Pa., a dash through the defense was nothing like this Sunday in the park.
Watters, rolling up double-digit runs every other time he touched the ball, rushed for 163 yards and two touchdowns during San Francisco’s 27-10 victory in Anaheim Stadium. The Rams, concentrating most of their defensive players in a zone designed to frustrate 49er quarterback Steve Young, left some gaping holes in the line for Watters to spill through.
Despite the fact that he was recovering from a severe case of the stomach flu, Watters was plenty strong enough to take it to the Rams. Perseverance in the face of adversity is a lesson he learned a long time ago, thanks to a man everyone in his neighborhood referred to as Mr. Big Jim. Watters called him “Dad.”
“When I was playing with those guys, some of the older kids would try to talk you out of your game,” Watters said. “My father told me to talk back to them.”
A couple of fistfights later, Watters discovered he was better off if he let his feet do the talking. He didn’t start running from fights, he just ran over, around and away from the guys on the other team.
“I started talking back and that made them try even harder,” he said. “They used to get after me pretty good. Everybody was bigger and stronger, and they’d always knock the wind out of me. Then they’d say, ‘Why don’t you just go home?’ But I wouldn’t go home.
“Then, when I started doing stuff, making plays on those guys, I started getting some of the guys on my side. They’d say, ‘He can play, man, lay off him.’ It’s just a respect thing. You’ve got to earn that respect.”
Watters, who was somewhat lost in the star-search shuffle at Notre Dame, has no trouble getting recognition these days, even on a team laden with Montanas, Youngs and Rices. He came into the game as the NFC’s fourth-leading rusher and now has 965 yards on the season.
“I always had confidence in Rick’s ability to play,” said Ram cornerback Todd Lyght, who was Watters’ roommate for two years at Notre Dame. “I truly feel that if he (had) went to another school and had been a featured tailback, he would have won the Heisman (Trophy).
“But at Notre Dame, we had too many offensive guys and there weren’t enough balls to go around.”
The Heisman Trophy is out of the question now, but a few more games such as Sunday’s against the Rams and a Lombardi Trophy might be in the 49ers’ future.
A second-round pick in 1990, Watters’ rookie year was a washout because of a broken foot and then a broken hand. He’s been full speed--just ask the Rams--all this season, however, and the once-anemic 49er running attack is now the perfect complement to their always-potent passing game.
Sunday, the Rams helped make that point with a scheme designed to frustrate Young. It worked . . . until Young handed the ball to Watters.
Watters rushed for 45 yards in the first quarter, ripping off runs of 12 and 15 yards during a 62-yard touchdown drive that ended when he blasted through the middle of the line into the end zone from three yards. He gained 47 yards in the second quarter, including a 15-yard jaunt on a second-and-10 play during a drive for a field goal that put the 49ers ahead, 10-0.
Then he carried the ball seven times on the 49ers’ fourth-quarter, game-clinching drive, culminating this one with another three-yard touchdown run.
“Ricky’s done such a great job,” 49er offensive tackle Steve Wallace said. “He’s performed great every week and usually with a young guy, you don’t have that. You have to give him a great deal of credit for his consistency. His concentration level to be ready to play each and every week at such a young age, that’s something.
“And his speed and that explosion on every run and at every contact is making a big difference for us.”
Sixteen years ago, Watters was driven by the need to survive a neighborhood rite of passage into manhood and the determination not to disappoint a postal worker named Mr. Big Jim.
Actually, things haven’t really changed that much.
“I’m the newest face in the crowd and all I want is not to be the one who lets these guys down,” Watters said. “I feel like I have to prove myself to my teammates every week.
“OK, I’m doing well now and they’re saying, ‘Hey he’s a player.’ But what would it be like if I started a down slide? Then they would say, ‘Wow, he got our hopes up high and now he let us down.’ ”
If the first 11 games of the 1992 season are any indication, that seems a most-remote possibility. After seeing him Saturday night, Coach George Seifert wondered if Watters would even be able to play, much yet have an impact.
“He played a hell of a game,” Seifert said, “especially when you consider he was in bed all day yesterday and last night.”
Watters was given an IV before the game. He said he felt pretty good by the opening kickoff and credited the 49er medical staff.
Even at less than full strength, Watters was well enough to make the Rams look sick.
