Hands That Rock

The biggest news story of the NFL off-season was the trade of Randy Moss to the Raiders after his seven years in Minnesota. In the first week of the new season, the biggest story was the retirement of Jerry Rice. These are two of the great pass receivers of all time, which leads to a question: How great?

In his first Oakland start, a game New England won, 30-20, Moss was typically Moss. His first two catches were dramatic, one a 73-yard scoring play. Those receptions helped the Raiders to a 14-10 lead but they couldn’t hold it. Even though Moss was the best player in sight, wide receivers, in NFL competition, don’t make that much difference.

For catching a football is the easiest skill in American sports.

Any good athlete with a good work ethic and good coaching can be taught to play wide receiver.

The NFL is full of competent contemporary receivers. The two standouts are Moss and Terrell Owens of the Philadelphia Eagles, but in championship terms, neither has been a difference-maker. During their time, many receivers with much less talent have earned Super Bowl rings. The title key for any pass catcher isn’t talent but the luck to play for a superior, successful coach, as Rice, notably, did in San Francisco in the years when Bill Walsh was building a five-time champion.

The Top 10

Here’s a view that places Moss and Rice with the leaders but not quite at the top. In the century since catching a thrown football was first allowed in 1906, Don Hutson, I’d say, was No. 1, followed by Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch, Moss third and Rice fourth, with Raymond Berry next, Owens sixth and Paul Warfield seventh. As for the rest of the top 10, any three others anyone prefers will do.

Wide receivers are easier to find -- in the pro draft and elsewhere -- than any other players. The most effective staff of receivers today plays for New England -- and would you draft any of those little guys?

People who catch passes are frequently overrated because what they can accomplish is so visible and so often spectacular. The Patriots, however, among others, have shown that they can coach dedicated athletes to play NFL wide receiver. It helps to have good size and speed, but there are only two essentials, the right work ethic and the right coaching.

Thus, no more than six or seven receivers belong in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It is pass offense that decides most NFL games -- rather than individual receivers -- and it is coaches and quarterbacks who are decisively influential. Receivers can always be found or manufactured, even though, from time to time, great receivers do appear.

Rice (and Walsh)

The whole reason that passing has been decisive in championship football lately is that most teams are finally throwing the ball. That’s always been the surest way to win -- particularly since 1913, when a Notre Dame player, Knute Rockne, showed the world how -- but from then until the 1980s, some 70 years later, pass offense stalled because of the deep conservatism of the coaches. In both college and pro ball, most coaches were afraid of interceptions.

Walsh, the 1980s leader of the San Francisco 49ers, changed that mind-set with a good passer and a great receiver -- Joe Montana and Rice. And though Walsh could have made his revolution with any good passer who would listen to him, he may have needed someone like Rice to finally persuade the NFL majority to join up.

Everyone could see that Rice was the antithesis of the game’s famous running-play bruisers, John Riggins, say, or Larry Csonka, Bronko Nagurski or Jerome Bettis. And everyone marveled at the achievements of this ordinary athlete who made himself into an extraordinary receiving specialist.

They noted Rice was neither big nor fast and possessed only a couple of compensating values: a top-speed burst out of his last cut plus a serious work ethic.

To most 1980s scouts, that was insufficient. They couldn’t foresee that Rice, who was in his 20th pro season when he retired this month, would get more out of himself than any other NFL player, perfecting his position both mentally and physically in a game where no other position can be perfected.

The way Rice played football played a major role in proving that Walsh was right when he said passes could be as harmless to a passing team as they are harmful to opponents. And football is a lot better for that. The focus on pass offense has brought about a game that is more creative, more skillful and more entertaining.

Hutson: the Model

The 1935 to ’45 Green Bay wonder, Hutson, remains the model in a field in which nobody has been able to improve on the four essentials he brought to the party: great speed, great hands, a winning attitude and pass-route artistry.

A generation or two before pass patterns were on the football agenda -- or even in the game’s vocabulary -- Hutson worked up his own pass patterns on the fly. A charter-year Hall of Famer, Hutson performed as if he’d anticipated the way the game eventually would be played.

Never before or since Hutson has any other world-class athlete stood so far ahead of his peers. Think of Moss doing what he does now -- when nobody else could do anything like it -- and you have Hutson in the 1930s.

Every exceptional receiver has had, to be sure, an empathetic if not influential coach, along with a talented passer, and Hutson was fortunate in both respects, particularly in his time, when nearly every coach’s ambition was to run the ball like Nagurski.

The pass-offense contribution of Hutson’s coach, Curly Lambeau, who had Arnie Herber at quarterback, was to let Herber and Hutson play catch. And this was to put all three of them in the Hall of Fame, none more deservedly than Hutson, who at Packer games, as he sprinted along while reaching for one of Herber’s javelin-like throws, was impossible to cover.

Hirsch: One of a Kind

Hirsch, of Michigan, Wisconsin and the 1949 to ’57 Los Angeles Rams, could have been as influential as Hutson if any other coaches or players had shown any interest in his shrewd, original, over-the-top receiving style.

A Big Ten sprinter, he was an All-American college running back converted to pass receiver by his 1949 Ram coach, Clark Shaughnessy, who that year put in the NFL’s first three-receiver offense.

Hirsch used his running-back skills to develop an ingenious set of fakes and cuts culminating, frequently, in an unconventional long-pass route -- a route that took him full speed on a straight line away from the quarterback to catch passes that were thrown to come down directly over his head.

On such plays, Hirsch ran with his head back, looking up at the ball -- rather than turning to see it coming in from the side, which was and still is everyone else’s style. His intention was to keep the defensive coverage behind instead of at his side.

Finally, at the end of the play, Hirsch would take the pass as it dropped down in front of him, a precise arm’s length in front, where he caught it with hands and fingers extended.

He never jumped or leaped for the ball. He said the idea was to “run through the catch” without breaking stride. “If leaping made you faster,” he said, “sprinters would leap for the finish line. They don’t.”

A requirement for long-ball plays is, of course, a passer who can throw it out there, and both of Hirsch’s quarterbacks, Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin, did that routinely. It is a commentary on the state of football coaching then and since that no rival coaches ever learned or apparently understood or even appreciated Hirsch’s overhead style. Most of the explanation is that most NFL coaches have been constrained -- hamstrung -- by their fear of interceptions.

Berry to Warfield

Athletes who overachieve are intrinsically more interesting than others, and all six of the game’s leading receivers can be classed in that group. This was most conspicuously true of Raymond Berry of the old Baltimore Colts, who in both 1958 and 1959 won the NFL title.

Berry was born with numerous physical defects, including bad eyes and uneven legs, so he worked hardest on his inadequacies.

“At least 75% of the job of catching passes is done by the legs,” he once said. “It takes a lot of spring to get a lot of balls.”

For a while, Berry and his quarterback, John Unitas, were all but unbeatable. Both were self-made all-pros -- two of the NFL’s earliest work-ethic champs. Unitas is often listed as No. 1 among quarterbacks, and a major reason for that was the skill of his prime target, Berry.

Paul Warfield (1964 to ‘74), who rates in any all-time top seven, was a wholly different type. The slickest pass receiver of his era, Warfield was the unthrown-to star of the NFL’s last great running team, the 1970s Miami Dolphins, who won the Super Bowl on a day when they threw only seven passes. Nonetheless, it was Warfield who made them go.

“You have to take care of Warfield first on every play,” a defensive coach, George Allen, said at the time. “[The Dolphins] don’t throw much, but if you don’t have a couple of good men on him on every snap, they’ll audible off to Warfield and kill you.”

Indeed, his small bag of critical catches put Warfield in the Hall of Fame. In today’s passing era, he would be as celebrated as Moss and Rice.

Owens: Most Gifted

Three of the top six receivers in the all-time top 10 are Rice, Moss and Owens, and that figures. Pass offense has only lately become dominant.

These three are also identified by their me-first demands for the ball at game time, unlike Hutson, Hirsch, Berry and Warfield, who seemed more content to be cogs in a machine. Plainly, the three contemporaries are totally aware of the importance of pass offense now and of their ability to contribute. What sounds like selfishness is more a reflection of their awareness that winning begins with them.

The most oppressively aggressive person in this category is Owens. But along with Rice and Moss, he’s doubtless right about his ability and also about his worth.

The way Owens worked his way back from serious injury last winter to Super Bowl stardom was unprecedented for even overachievers. What he doesn’t appreciate is that on the Eagles, he’s with a coach who understands pass offense, Andy Reid.

In any case, Owens is the greatest physical specimen of all the great receivers. At 6 feet 3 and 226 pounds, he has size, strength and speed. He doesn’t have all the skills native to naturally born receivers but as a threat to cornerbacks, he’s in a class by himself in the science of opening up a field.

Moss: Most Talented

The case for Moss rests on his football ability, not on his behavior. The Vikings banished him to Oakland because they confused the way he behaved with the way he can play the game.

The Vikings weren’t a very good team in Moss’ day, nor at times very well-coached. The possibility that the Vikings or their coaches could have played a role in his downfall in Minneapolis has never, apparently, entered any Minnesotan’s mind.

There are those who say that Moss can’t ever produce to his capacity because he’s a bad egg, and they may be right. But he is a gifted pro, and there may never have been so much talent packed in any other receiver, even Hirsch or Hutson.

He can make, has made, unbelievable plays that are beyond the reach of anyone else. Moss is more gifted than Rice, who has justly been more celebrated for more years. Had Moss played seven years for a coach like Bill Walsh, the Hall of Fame people would now be fixing to build a special wing just for him.