Lions’ River Runs Deep

Ron Rivers is only a couple of miles in yardage behind Barry Sanders, but is catching up. Rivers left Fresno State as the school’s leading rusher and then sat for five years behind Sanders in Detroit. The Lions, unconvinced about his potential to replace Sanders, traded for Greg Hill, but Rivers ran for 96 yards in Detroit’s upset of Seattle.

Coach Bobby Ross, however, was not about to lead Rivers’ campaign for Hall of Fame consideration. “He ran hard,” Ross said. “He ran very tough--harder than I thought he could run, to be very honest.”

A year ago offensive coordinator Ray Sherman took the fall for the decline in Kordell Stewart’s play at Pittsburgh. Sherman left to ravage Minnesota. The Vikings had the No. 1 offense under Brian Billick, who went on to become head coach in Baltimore. Chip Myers was going to replace Billick, but he died of a heart attack. If anybody should have had an edge on Atlanta it should have been a guy named Sherman. But under Sherman, the Vikings scored 17 points--the team’s lowest output since late 1997.

“I don’t care about that,” Sherman said. “We won the game. . . . Did we win the game last year [against Atlanta]?”

Feel the love.

Wide receiver Cris Carter, the biggest phony in the league, was more to the point. “People don’t know. People are ignorant, for the most part, and that’s a compliment,” he said. “They don’t understand that defensively we don’t have the personnel that we have offensively. So it’s also Ray’s job to take care of Foge [Fazio] and the defense.”

Nonsense.