Smith, Rice Set Standards

Even though old-timers Emmitt Smith and Jerry Rice have lost much of their quickness and speed, greatness in action was there for all to see again the other day when either of them had the football.

Against Atlanta, Rice dropped a touchdown pass, true, but in a long career who doesn’t?

The larger truth is that he and Smith, as slow as they may now be, and despite the merciless physical beatings they have taken in every NFL season of the 1990s, are still the go-to players for winning teams, respectively San Francisco and Dallas.

A question for today is: How do these guys stay up there? The likely answer is that the quality that makes for football greatness isn’t speed, size, endurance or any other physical tangible. It’s an intangible--football ability--or what might be called aptitude for football.

It seems improbable, for instance, that Rice could ever have been an Olympic sprint champion. What he has is a gift for exploding out of a cut and placing himself to catch a football with a defensive back close but out of position.

Nor can you imagine Smith as a Dodger infielder. What he has is an inborn knack for making tacklers miss.

As veteran all-pros, Rice and Smith are perfectly matched for their sport. Both are proving that aging, fading players can continue to play the game effectively if in the first place they have a talent for it.

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They’re No. 2: The 49ers were displaced as the best team in their division last week because Atlanta rarely needed blitzing linebackers or defensive backs to get a sufficient rush on quarterback Steve Young.

It was a numerical win for the Falcons.

San Francisco’s five-man offensive line is so weak that Atlanta could rip it and harass Young with a four-man defensive line, leaving seven Falcons in the secondary to cover Young’s five receivers.

Halfback Garrison Hearst gained some big yards for the 49ers, but only because the Falcon defensive team was focusing on San Francisco’s pass-offense personnel, and reacting, if necessary, to the run.

That is the only way to handle Young’s team now and Atlanta defensive coach Rich Brooks has found it out.

After two-thirds of the regular season, there’s no mystery to the decline of the 49ers. Needing 22 good players for offense and defense, they have only seven--Young, Hearst, Rice, two other receivers, Terrell Owens and J.J. Stokes, and two defensive linemen, Bryant Young and Junior Bryant.

The team was disintegrating under President Carmen Policy before he decided to leave for Cleveland, then it fell apart when owner Eddie DeBartolo left as chief executive last December.

Although Young figures to put the 49ers in the playoffs again, their chance for a sixth Super Bowl triumph in this era--a record-setting 18-year period in which they have dramatically revolutionized football, bringing the forward pass to prominence--has departed.

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New champion? The Falcons are demonstrating that they now have what it takes to make a title run: a winning quarterback, Chris Chandler; a determined halfback, Jamal Anderson, and substantial help elsewhere in the various offensive positions and on defense.

Throughout their ballclub, in other words, the Falcons are employing the kinds of players the 49ers once had, and some of them were recruited when the interim San Diego coach, June Jones, was in Atlanta.

Chandler, however, came over in a trade with Houston on Feb. 24, 1997, the year that Dan Reeves came in as head coach, and already it’s clear that they wouldn’t be where they are today without their 33-year-old, 11-year NFL veteran quarterback.

In action, Chandler has almost always been what you see now, a confident performer who as a passer can usually hit the open man. But he has never before played on a team this good.

Though 6 feet 4 and 225 pounds, Chandler has had injury problems, particularly with concussions, and has frequently been incapacitated.

Anderson, too, has for many years had the greatness he is showing now. His problem has been the lack of a good quarterback with whom to share the pounding and pressure from defensive teams.

Their future depends on whether their solid but conservative coach, Reeves, can bring himself to authorize the mass of passes he denied quarterback John Elway in his Denver days.