Rice Best Ever Receiver? Is There a Doubt?

The Lord’s not supposed to bless you with everything. He didn’t give me any hair. Why did He give Rice so much?

--FLOYD PETERS, Tampa Bay’s bald defensive coordinator

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Possibly before the end of this season, Jerry Rice will score the 127th touchdown of his already singular career. That will give him more touchdowns than anyone who has ever played pro football, more than even all the great running backs and fullbacks of this or any other era. And when that record finally is his, Rice will have erased what little doubt remains as to whether he is the finest receiver the game has ever seen.

It is a record for the ages, a line in the history books that shouldn’t belong to a receiver, not when the times he touches the ball during games pales in comparison to other positions. But it is this ability to turn so many of his limited opportunities into scores that separates Rice from the rest of the great receivers we have come to cherish.

“It is incredible, the amount of touchdowns he has scored,” says Mike Allman, Seattle’s director of player personnel who has spent 29 years scouting pro football talent. “It’s amazing how quickly he broke the record. No question, it leaves him standing alone--the fact he produces at the level he does, the way he scores like he does.”

For Rice, who wants to leave the game holding every major receiving mark, this particular milestone holds special significance. “It is the one that will stay with me for a long time,” he says. “It is like the ultimate. Man, to achieve something like.” To catch and pass Jim Brown, who in nine seasons with Cleveland, scored 126 touchdowns. To catch and pass Walter Payton, who in 13 seasons with Chicago had 125. Rice, in almost nine seasons, has 122--116 receiving and six rushing. To jump ahead of these Hall of Famers, to do it possibly in less than a decade of stellar play and to know, barring injury, he should have at least three or four years of quality performances remaining--how much distance will he establish between himself and the pack before he is done?

And to think, only a few weeks ago, Rice was haunted by those suggesting that perhaps his time already had passed. Sure, he still could play, but maybe Michael Irvin, Sterling Sharpe and Andre Rison had jumped ahead of him. For someone who remains as insecure as Rice, even after all these seasons of glory, the implications of his decline served as a jump-start toward continued excellence in the ‘90s.

“It makes me elevate my game,” he says. “I think for one thing, you come into this league really trying to establish yourself somehow, so you can say, ‘Hey, this is my territory here, you better not come into my territory.’

“They were starting to come into my territory. You will never hear me say I am the greatest. But I didn’t think my game had dropped off at all, and they were counting me out, saying these guys were better than me. It really surprised me. I may be 31 but I’m not ready to retire. I got too much left to accomplish. So I just had to work even harder.”

Irvin’s message was a 12-catch performance against the 49ers on October 17, a game in which Rice had seven receptions but displayed little of his rival’s pizzazz. Rice quickly went public, lamenting that he needed to be more involved in the 49ers’ offense. Since then, the results have been nothing short of, well, vintage Rice: 45 catches in seven games for 805 yards and 10 touchdowns, including a hair-pulling four scores against Peters’ Bucs.

Slipping? “I haven’t seen one iota of evidence that his skill level has deteriorated,” says Dick Steinberg, the New York Jets’ general manager who has been scouting pro talent for 22 years. Certainly, the numbers back up Steinberg. Rice, with 78 catches for 1,235 yards and 13 touchdowns, is on target to produce at least the second-best statistical year of his career--and possibly the greatest. And that although he still hasn’t reached the same comfort level with Steve Young, his current quarterback, as he enjoyed with Joe Montana--and probably never will. After all, this is the third full season Young and Rice have worked together, yet the receiver suggests the quarterback only now is “starting to get a feel for the offense. He is gaining confidence and is going to get better.” Young only has led the NFL in passing efficiency the past two seasons and is No. 1 again.

Still, even though Young’s scrambles remove some of Rice’s influence from the 49ers’ attack and his left-handed passes are not quite as soft nor as perfectly aimed as a Montana masterpiece, Rice and Young have produced touchdowns at a rate comparable to the best of the Joe and Jerry years. Of Rice’s 116 touchdown receptions, 55 came from Montana in six seasons. Forty-five have come from Young in half that time.

And with Young just growing into his prime, Rice certainly will continue to benefit from his presence, Montana clone or not. As such, all those records that are so important to Rice should be well within reach. Some he already owns: all-time receiving touchdowns (116); consecutive years, 1,000 yards receiving (eight); and most 1,000-yard receiving seasons (eight, tied with Steve Largent). He also has a share of four major Super Bowl marks. Other records will be his within a few seasons, particularly the all-time reception mark, now held by Art Monk, and the all-time yardage mark, now held by James Lofton. Rice is currently ranked fifth in the former and sixth in the latter. He is also third on the list for 100-yard receiving games with 43, and he has now caught a pass in 124 consecutive games.

And as his numbers grow, we get a rare opportunity to watch greatness at work. How many times in a generation do we have a chance to enjoy the best athlete at any position doing his job? For those too young to have seen Brown or Unitas, Butkus or Lilly, Bednarik or Deacon Jones in their primes, Rice becomes a player to relish and enjoy. There may never be another receiver like him again.

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When Jerry Rice was a senior at Mississippi Valley State, scouts would journey to Itta Bena, Miss., to watch film of his game performances. Rice so badly wanted an NFL career that he would boldly join the scouts, sitting with them so he could point out particular highlights. Despite his concerns, they didn’t need his help to see he would be a terrific pro. But who could have projected this kind of brilliance?

“The only question you had about him was that he didn’t have the blazing speed,” says Steinberg, one of the scouts who showed up in Itta Bena. “You knew he would be a productive receiver in the league. But you couldn’t see the greatness. It didn’t show up on the stopwatches.”

Allman remembers Rice’s performance at a scouting combine. “I’ll never forget it if I live to be 100,” Allman says. “We all had our watches out and we were expecting a fantastic time from him. He runs the 40 and it’s 4.6. 4.6. Some people thought he wasn’t going to be fast enough and with justification. But he runs away from faster people in games, always has and still does. Just blows away from them.

“How can you time competitive speed on a stopwatch? It’s what sets him apart.”

It is this burst of quickness, accentuated by the rest of his athletic gifts, that has elevated Rice above the other immortal receivers. More than any other gift, it has enabled him to emerge as this prolific touchdown producer. Perhaps more important, it has created that fear factor in opponents and that anticipation factor in fans: Will he score on this play? Want to measure greatness? Just ask fans what athletes they enjoy watching the most.

“With all the great receivers, you know they would catch the ball,” says San Diego Chargers General Manager Bobby Beathard, who has been scouting NFL talent for 31 years. “But with him, every time he catches it, there is a good chance he could end up scoring. That is remarkable. Nobody has been able to do it like him. I’d like to know what his speed is over 40 yards once he catches the ball.”

So many of those touchdowns have not been the result of long throws and short runs into the end zone. Rather, Rice has taken the short-pass philosophy of the 49ers and turned it into a one-man scoring scheme. His signature play is the quick slant over the middle, a few yards down the field, when he gathers in the ball in full stride and accelerates away from the defender. A simple 5-yard play becomes a 50-yard touchdown. In other hands, it remains a 5-yard gain.

“What is out of the ordinary for others is normal for Jerry,” Young says. “You come to expect him to make the Superman play. That’s how good he is all the time.”

“He wants the ball,” Montana says. “You can always tell a great player when they want the ball in any situation. He gets upset when he doesn’t get it. You forget sometimes there are other players on the field, and sometimes they’re double-teaming him, which makesit tough getting him the ball. But it’s good to know you have a guy in that situation that wants to make the play. He has amazing hands and an amazing build.”

But is Rice better than, oh, Don Hutson or Lance Alworth; Charley Taylor or Otis Taylor; Fred Biletnikoff or Raymond Berry; Charley Hennigan or Swann; Largent or Monk; Paul Warfield or Don Maynard? Any determination of the “greatest” in any category is always subjective, what with rules changes, differences in eras, strengths of teams and leagues and personality influences all muddling the picture. Still, we turned to a panel of experts to get their astute judgment: Steinberg, Beathard and Allman, whose scouting experience totals 82 years over four decades; Peters, who has been in the NFL for 36 years, including 23 as a defensive coach; Fritz Shurmur, Phoenix defensive coordinator who has been in the business 38 years; and a contemporary of Rice’s, the refreshingly candid Irvin.

Their conclusion: Rice is the best ever.

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“I think so,” says Shurmur, who, as Rams coordinator for nine seasons, had to plot against Rice twice every fall. “There have been guys along the way who have had big games and all that, but I think consistently over a long period of time, with his durability and great ability to make plays, he’s the best ever.”

If he is not the best, Peters says, “surely there’s nobody that’s better than he is. He’s a freak. Most people are blessed with speed, a little bit of height, very athletic, great hands. But they won’t have all of them. These guys come down the pike once in a while like the Jim Browns and other greats. Tell me something he can’t do. I’ve tried to defense him for his whole career and he’s driven me crazy.” That craziness continued this season, when Rice caught four touchdown passes against Peters’ Bucs last month.

When Shurmur was with the Rams, he put in a special defensive call just to deal with Rice. “Man 80” was a signal to the secondary to roll its zone coverage toward Rice. “It was where we actually rolled the zone to a specific player for the first time,” Shurmur says. “You are always looking for some way to get help to cover him and not leave it to one person. It’s a damn near impossible task. . . . He’s got that special grace. That’s the way he impressed you.”

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“From the standpoint of what he has accomplished, he is the best,” Steinberg says. “There might have been players who were faster or maybe some who have had better hands but for the games he has won, the big plays he has made, I don’t think you will get an argument if you call him the best. Remember, he hasn’t been doing these things in garbage games, either. Most of those games have meant something over the years. It puts him in a class by himself.”

Rice isn’t strictly a glory guy either. Allman viewed a tape of his performance against the Bucs and came away remembering not the four scores but another play. “He ran a post into the end zone and is looking at the ball and this guy closes from the other side and just levels him. It was a killer shot, but he got up after a while and didn’t miss a play. Three plays later, they run the same pattern, and he catches it for a touchdown.

“You can’t intimidate him. How many receivers want to run over the middle? He makes a living doing it.” Remarkably, Rice has not missed a game in his career; his consecutive streak has reached 150, including playoffs, and counting.

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He also can block. San Francisco Coach George Seifert once proclaimed Rice having “as All-Pro a game as he has had” against the Rams, even though he didn’t have a touchdown and caught only two passes. Instead, he had thrown crushing blocks on two long John Taylor scoring receptions, along with helping to ignite the 49ers’ rushing game with his blocking in the secondary.

“I look back and remember that game more than any other,” Rice says. “When I look at my career and go over the most distinct memories, it will be a game like this I will relish. It’s not just getting into the end zone but making plays like that for the other guys.”

Rice, more than anyone else, understands he has profited from the presence of these “other guys” during his 49ers years: from the likes of Montana and Young, from a solid offensive line, from having Taylor on the other side to relieve double teaming, from a system designed by Bill Walsh that emerged as the dominant passing offense of the past 10 years.

But none of those elements accounts for plays like the one Rice made this year against the Rams, when he flashed down the sideline and pulled off an on-the-run, one-handed, in-stride grab, a catch most would have had difficulty accomplishing with two hands.

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“See, he has the size to take care of jamming at the line and the quickness to get away fast and the athletic ability to do acrobatic stuff and the concentration to finish off plays,” Steinberg says. “What we’ve also all seen since he first came up is the way he has continued to work to develop his abilities. He hasn’t been content to just be another good receiver.”

It is this work ethic that continues to push Rice. Montana says his drive “is far and above most people’s. Every time he catches the ball, he’s usually 60, 70 yards down the field whether it’s practice or not. He’ll catch a 5-yarder and he’ll run 50 or 60 yards.”

Beathard was startled to see, that even as a veteran, Rice’s practice habits separated him from most everyone else. The 49ers and Chargers worked out over the summer for a couple of days, and Rice stood out, just because of his constant hustle.

“It was eye-popping,” Beathard says. “I had heard about how hard he works but to actually see it was something. Junior Seau was the same way. John Madden was watching, and he remarked that it was pretty incredible that the two best athletes on the field were also the hardest workers.”

In his 30s, Rice is in better shape than ever, and not just physically. Buoyed by a contract extension that will pay him $15.45 million between 1993 and 1997, he is likely locked into being a 49er forever.

Haunted by those demons named Irvin, Rison and Sharpe, pushed by an insecurity that has convinced him he must approach every training camp as if he might not survive the final cut, Rice keeps forcing both his body and his mind to excel.

“I’m convinced that I still haven’t reached my potential,” he says. “I can still learn, I still can get better. As long as I think that is true, I see no reason why I can’t keep producing the same kind of seasons that I have.

“I’m just not ready for anyone to take over my territory. Their time will come. But it won’t be for a while.”