Tall Order for Arizona : UCLA Receiver Stokes Wants to Be Feared for His Speed as Well as His Height of 6-5

Jerel Jamal Stokes is a thoroughbred who envies quarterhorses--but only those in front.

He carries 6 feet 5 inches proudly, but chafes at tributes that begin and end with his ability to overwhelm a defensive back with his size.

Sometimes it makes him want to play smaller, a Napoleon complex in reverse.

“I don’t want to catch only fades,” UCLA’s Stokes said. “I want to catch streaks. I want to do the same things as the little people.”

A touchdown from a “fade”--a ball thrown over a defender to the corner of the end zone--counts the same as one caught on a “streak,” but it is more personally rewarding to beat a cornerback at his own game, to catch a ball in stride and run to the goal line.

Happiness is turning a six-yard pass into a 95-yard touchdown against Washington. An in-and-out fake in the end zone for a nine-yard touchdown against Oregon State is something a 5-foot-10 guy could do, and so it brings a little more satisfaction than winning a jump ball in the corner.

It’s proof that he is a receiver, not merely a tall player who can catch a football. J.J. Stokes always seems to be trying to prove something to somebody.

Mostly it’s that he can run.

“People look at me, and maybe it’s because of my long stride, but they don’t think I can run as fast as a smaller receiver,” he said. Stokes claims a 4.57-second 40-yard dash, not world-beating, but fast enough.

“He might run 4.6 in a straight line, but he runs 4.2 with a football,” says Darryl Stokes, his brother’s biggest supporter--unless it’s Jeffery Stokes or maybe John Stokes, or maybe Annie or John Sr. Team Stokes takes pride in every one of J.J.’s 20 touchdown catches, which has tied JoJo Townsell’s school record. Thirteen of the touchdowns have come this season, a school record, 11 of them in the past four weeks.

Stokes has 44 catches for 689 yards in UCLA’s seven games, and Darryl Stokes takes personal pride in each catch. “All of the routes I run, I learned from my brother,” J.J. said. “When I first started playing wide receiver, I didn’t know how to run a route.”

Darryl Stokes had played wideout at Long Beach State, where his claim to fame had been catching a touchdown pass in UCLA’s first home game at the Rose Bowl, and was playing in the United States Football League with the Chicago Blitz when his brother asked for help.

“He had been a running back all the way back into Pop Warner ball,” Darryl said. “One year, his team scored 32 touchdowns and he scored them all.

“But he had grown up. You look, and all of a sudden he had gone from 5-6 to 6-6. I hear all that talk about him being 6-4 1/2 and I have to laugh. I’m 6-6, and he looks me in the eye.

“I didn’t have time to run routes with him, but I showed him routes on paper and showed him how to get off the ball and how to get rid of a defensive back. When he comes home, we still practice swim moves. The other day, I watched tape of him catching a touchdown pass, and he started with a swim move on a defensive back. I told somebody, ‘He learned that from me.’ ”

The swim is a basic overhand stroke that a receiver uses to get his body between the defender and the ball.

When J.J. wanted to increase his speed, Darryl turned him over to Jeffery Stokes. “He’s the running and weightlifting expert in the family,” Darryl said.

John Stokes sends his support long-distance. He went to a culinary academy in New York and now is a chef at Des Alps, a hotel restaurant in Lucerne, Switzerland. He gets tapes of J.J.’s games weekly from John Stokes Sr.

“The last time I saw a tape of the USC game was this summer with John in Lucerne,” J.J. said.

Against USC, Stokes caught six passes for a school-record 263 yards and three touchdowns. He had 192 yards in the fourth quarter alone.

“I try not to think about it, because I’m trying to have an even better season,” Stokes said. “It’s always going to be with me, and I thought about it during the summer because it helped me work out.”

The workouts were daily 7 a.m. sprints on the UCLA track with Bryan Adams and Carl Greenwood, whose speed was both stimulating and humbling.

The work was preparation for stepping into the role of lead receiver left vacant when Sean LaChapelle, whose records are quickly being eclipsed, went to the Rams.

Stokes caught seven passes, one for a touchdown, in the season-opening loss to California, and six against Nebraska. He caught three passes, one for a touchdown, against Stanford as quarterback Wayne Cook began to shake early season jitters and establish himself.

Then came the San Diego State game. The Aztecs had recruited Stokes as a tight end, because they did not believe he would be fast enough to play wide receiver, even though he had played the position well enough at Point Loma High to catch 66 passes for 1,535 yards and 15 touchdowns as a senior. Most of those passes were from Danny White, now the quarterback at Arizona.

“We recruited him as an athlete ,” UCLA receivers coach Rick Neuheisel said.

Against San Diego State, Stokes had five catches for 164 yards and three touchdowns. There were 35 members of Team Stokes and associates in the stands at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium that night, including John Stokes Jr., who had come in from Switzerland for a first-hand look at his little brother.

“I told John, ‘Wait until you see what J.J. has turned into,’ ” Darryl Stokes said. “ ‘You aren’t going to believe it.’ ”

Three touchdown passes against Brigham Young and a school record-tying four against Washington followed. Stokes caught one touchdown pass Saturday against Oregon State, drawing extensive double coverage for the first time all season.

“It’s a tall order” to do what Stokes had done in the previous three games, UCLA Coach Terry Donahue said.

The double coverage presents other opportunities for the Bruin offense. “He makes a defense react,” Donahue said. “Are you going to single-cover or double-cover him? If you double-cover him, what are the ramifications?”

They are the questions Arizona coaches are pondering this week in preparation for Saturday night’s game at the Rose Bowl.

A junior, Stokes has become Cook’s primary target. “I’m starting to expect him to do great things,” Cook said. “Just get him the ball and he’s going to do something spectacular with it.”

If Cook needed assurance, Stokes’ second touchdown catch against Washington offered it--and then some. From the 18, he headed toward the goal post. “When I threw it, I went, ‘Oh, no,’ because he came so open and I thought I threw it too far,” Cook said.

Stokes made a diving catch, barely getting the back half of the ball before he hit the ground. “There’s not another receiver in the country who makes that catch,” Cook said. “It’s nice to have a guy who’s that tall and that athletic so if you screw up, he can bail you out.”

It’s a catch no 5-10 receiver could have made.