BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…September 5, 1994, 30 years ago today:
During what ends up as their final season in Los Angeles, the visiting Raiders get steamrolled 44-14 by the 49ers at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. In that game, 49ers wide receiver Jerry Rice scored three touchdowns to pass Jim Brown as the NFL career leader in TDs with 127, with two coming on passes from Steve Young and the other on the ground. And he did it in his prime. Rice, the greatest wideout of all-time, would lead the Niners to their fifth Super Bowl title that winter. He’d play 10 more seasons and would end up with 208 touchdowns in his 20-year career.
Rice didn’t play football until high school in Starkville, MS, and even then it was kind of an accident. According to Biography.com, “Rice proved himself to be a gifted runner, often cutting back and forth on the long dirt road that ran in front of his house.” Then he discovered football. “As the story goes, Rice had skipped classes one day and ran into an assistant principal. After sprinting away from him, Rice was eventually reprimanded. But his quickness was soon brought to the attention of the school's football coach, who put him in pads and had him line up as a receiver.”
And what a mark Rice made. At Mississippi Valley State, he took advantage of a spread-the-field offensive attack and set 18 Division I-AA records, including 4,692 career receiving yards and 50 touchdowns. NFL scouts wondered about the competition. But the 49ers were unfazed, trading two draft picks to the New England Patriots to take him at No. 16 overall before the Dallas Cowboys could grab him with the 17th pick.
San Francisco already had two Super Bowl crowns in its remarkable run, thanks largely to coach Bill Walsh’s intricate offense. It took a while to Rice to digest that (and the speed of the NFL game), and his rookie year was a rollercoaster. But he broke out in his second season, combining with quarterback Joe Montana to form the NFL’s most lethal combination. In 1986, Rice made 86 catches for 1,570 yards and 15 TDs. By 1987, he was NFL Player of the Year, and by 1988 he was a Super Bowl champion. He won two titles with Montana at QB and a third with Young.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
