Young DBs can't catch 'aging' Rice

Monday, December 06, 1999
Young DBs can't catch 'aging' Rice
But WR's 2 TDs, 157 yards, not enough for 49ers

BY TOM GROESCHEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Jerry Rice and Carl Pickens each caught two TD passes.
(AP photo)
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OK, so Jerry Rice ran wild. But this time, the NFL's all-time greatest receiver failed to bring a team along with him.
The allegedly aging San Francisco star caught nine passes for 157 yards and two touchdowns Sunday, all season-high numbers. But the horrendous 49ers lost 44-30, leaving the Bengals' young secondary to reflect fondly on meeting the game's career receptions leader (1,191 and counting).
“Jerry still has it,” said backup cornerback Rico Clark, who helped cover Rice at times. “People say he's lost it, but he hasn't.”
Rice, 37, has had a bad year by his standards. With quarterback Steve Young out with a concussion, he entered Sunday with only 43 catches for 413 yards — a career-low average of 9.6 yards per catch. And he had just two TDs all season, a total he matched Sunday.
“He knows all the tricks, all the veteran moves,” said rookie cornerback Rodney Heath, who covered Rice most of the day. “I got a couple of breakups on him, but he got me a couple of times, too.”
One of those was Rice's 55-yard touchdown catch late in the third quarter, which brought San Francisco within 30-24. Rice got a step behind Heath, who could only wave his hands in a fruitless attempt to break up the pass.
“He gave me a little nudge, and got separation,” Heath said. “Some tricks of the trade.”
Heath, a rookie free agent from Western Hills High School, said he was not intimidated.
“Nah, he was just another player out there,” Heath said, smiling.
Even when Heath did knock away a pass or two, he was not about to say anything.
“Just because it's Jerry over there, I'm not going to celebrate anything,” he said.
Artrell Hawkins, the other starting cornerback, also covered Rice. After the game, he embraced the great one.
“I went up and told him it was a pleasure to play against him,” Hawkins said. “Jerry Rice was always an icon, and still is.”
But Hawkins, a second-year player from the University of Cincinnati, wasn't all gaga at seeing Rice's famous No.80 gliding across the rain-slicked AstroTurf at Cinergy Field.
“I don't want this to come out wrong, but I don't think he's as dominant as he was in the past,” Hawkins said. “That's life. You get older, you lose a step or two. But he can still play.”
In four previous regular-season games vs. Cincinnati, Rice had caught 23 passes for 351 yards and two TDs — an average of nearly 88 yards per game. And of course there was the 1989 Super Bowl, when he set records with 11 catches for 215 yards and scored once.
Sunday was Rice's first 100-yard receiving day of the season. In fact, he had only broken 60 yards once, last week vs. Green Bay (63).
“I don't feel like I really have to prove anything about if I score touchdowns or how many balls I catch,” Rice said. “I do enjoy opportunities, though, and overall I feel like we got some opportunities today. We made some plays, but we didn't win the ballgame.”
It was a happy but rather sheepish group of Bengals defenders afterward, pleased to win but embarrassed by allowing 437 yards passing — and 542 overall.
“We didn't play well, but because our offense played the way they did, it took some pressure off of us,” Hawkins said.
And someday, when the grandkids ask, “What did you do in the NFL, daddy?,” Bengals defensive backs can talk about the rainy December day when they faced Jerry Rice — and lived.
“It was cool to go up against him,” Heath said. “But the best thing is, we won the game.”

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