The G.O.A.T
It’s been a long time without a post here, but the truth is: we are so engrossed into the NFL season that it is hard to find a minute to write about it. Now that the season is over, and the Super Bowl was just a few days ago, here we are already starving for NFL discussions that will keep us going through Easter & summer…all the way down to Thursday September 9th when the Super Bowl Champions New Orleans Saints (am I really writing this right now??) will take the field to kickoff the 2010 season.
Well, no questions we will have plenty to talk about in the coming weeks: the Combine, Free-Agency (or what will remain of it), the Draft of course, mini-camps etc.
In the meantime, and as we are set to kickoff the off-season, I thought it would be appropriate to post a few lines on the one player that helped make two Quarterbacks, future Hall of Famers, I am talking of course of the G.O.A.T (Greatest Off All Time), the incomparable, the one and only, Jerry Rice.
Legendary number 80 was drafted by San Francisco in April 1985 ; The 49ers were coming off an outstanding season in ‘84, finishing with a then league-record 15-1 record and winning Super Bowl XIX beating the Dan Marino led Miami Dolphins, thanks to 3 TDs by star running back Roger Craig and another MVP performance by Montana. The Niners were hot. They were also choosing 28th & dead last in the NFL draft.
But Bill Walsh was in control and all he did on Draft day was trade the 49ers’ first two picks for New England’s 1st round choice (#16 overall, the teams also swapped 3rd round picks as part of the deal), and selected Rice…just ahead of the Dallas Cowboys, who were thinking hard about picking him too.
You can bet Gil Brandt, then Dallas’ general manager, was sick when he saw this happen in front of his very eyes. Rice would never be a Cowboy, and yours truly is quite pleased about that or else he probably wouldn’t be writing this post about Mister Rice, today!
Well, no need to go through all the insane numbers that Jerry Rice posted in his career: basically all you have to remember is that he is the all time leader in every major statistical category for wide receivers (most TDs, most catches, most yards, most bla, most bla bla, and also most bla bla bla), you name it: Rice will always be #1 anyway. Did I mention he is also the all-time NFL leader in touchdowns scored with 208? And don’t think any of the current Wide Receiver greats such as Terrell Owens or Randy Moss can ever catch up on his records one day…it won’t happen.
Also what separates Jerry from these guys is that, aside from the gaudy numbers, Rice was selected to the Pro Bowl 13x times and named All-Pro 11 times in his 20 seasons. Maybe even more impressive, he has won 3x Super Bowl rings and he was the MVP of Super Bowl XXIII back in 1988.
So, here you have the records that will never be matched, you also have the Pro Bowl selections and the Super Bowl championships, and you have something very rare: a WR who has been the Most Valuable Player of a Super Bowl (for the record, after Jerry Rice and in the 20+ years that followed, only Hynes Ward and Santonio Holmes of the Pittsburgh Steelers have been Wide Receivers who earned Super Bowl MVP honors).
Rice was a legend during his playing days, and he is a legend 5 years after his retirement. He was a shoe-in for induction into the Hall of Fame and is now the newest member of the 49ers’ Super Bowl era in Canton.
What else to say. Seriously, you could write & talk for ages about the great Jerry Rice.
But when I think of him, I think of the ultimate professional player, so talented and dedicated, that everything he touched, transformed into gold.
That is fitting for a team that plays in Scarlet & Gold uniforms. He made Joe Montana and Steve Young look even better, probably (but it works both ways and there is no questions they both made him look super too…), all in all this was a match made in heaven for the San Francisco 49ers.
And so before I shut up, one last bit of your precious time to just say “Congratulations Jerry”, you are the greatest WR to ever play in the NFL.
