Twenty-one years ago this week, Bill Walsh stood before the skeptical
Bay Area media and defended a controversial decision. He told them
that the 49ers' troubled rookie wide receiver would remain a starter
despite several bad performances.

The rookie's name was Jerry Rice.

The 49ers, fresh off a victory in Super Bowl XIX, were 6-5 and
fighting for their playoff lives. Joe Montana's passing numbers were
off. Rice, the team's top draft pick, had 26 receptions in 11 games,
but he also dropped 10 balls, some of them at the worst possible
times. He was coming off a game in which he dropped two passes,
fumbled once and caught just one pass. Niners fans booed the rookie;
local columnists made him the butt of jokes. Freddie Solomon, a
respected veteran who caught touchdown passes in 10 straight games in
1984, had become the invisible man in the Niners offense while Montana
and Rice played pitch 'n' drop.

But Walsh held his ground, supported Rice and kept him in the weekly
gameplan. "At some point, the boos will turn to cheers," predicted
Walsh during a press conference on November 18, 1985.

That point was only a few weeks away.

The Seductive Target
Legend has it that Walsh saw a television clip of Rice playing in a
college game the day before a 1984 matchup between the 49ers and
Oilers. Walsh was intrigued with what he saw. He began to scout the
youngster from Mississippi Valley State, who was on his way to setting
18 NCAA records in Archie "Gunslinger" Cooley's spread offense. The
Niners coach spoke at length with Cooley and became convinced that
Rice was more than just a small-school, gadget-offense product. When
Rice won the MVP award of the Blue-Gray game, Walsh's interest piqued.
When the receiver was still on the board midway through the 1985
draft, Walsh traded three picks to move up and take him. A draftnik
named Vinny DiTrani, writing for the Bergen Record at the time, gave
the Niners a D+ for their draft efforts.

Rice was groomed as an immediate starter who would replace Solomon as
soon as possible. He excelled in training camp. Facing perennial Pro
Bowl corner Lester Hayes in a preseason game, Rice caught three passes
for 49 yards, and he lost a 64-yard reception because he stepped out
of bounds before the catch. Two weeks later, he caught five passes for
125 yards against the Chargers in another preseason game. In that
game, the wise-beyond-his-years Rice noticed that cornerback Danny
Walters was peeking into the backfield on the first two plays from
scrimmage. Rice told quarterback Matt Cavanaugh to check off his
primary receiver and look for him deep on the third play. The result
was a 56-yard touchdown.

"When I was drafted out of Mississippi Valley State, the word was I
had good hands, could get open and ran well when I got the ball," Rice
said after the Chargers game. "But they also said I wasn't really a
speed-burner. Today, though, I think I showed I can get down the field
in a hurry."

Rice's scouting report appeared to be exactly wrong in the first weeks
of the 1985 season. He averaged 18.2 yards per catch in his first
three games, including a three-catch, 94-yard effort in a 34-10 win
over the Raiders, demonstrating that he was a true deep threat despite
his poor stopwatch speed. But against the Saints in Week 4, he dropped
the only pass thrown to him. The Niners, 16-point favorites, lost to
the lowly Saints 20-17 and fell to 2-2 (they also lost their season
opener to the Vikings).

Rice was injured against the Saints; he separated his shoulder
returning a kickoff. At the time, he was expected to miss 2-4 weeks.
Some observers felt that the Niners would be able to return to their
short-passing routes without the bomb-happy rookie in the lineup. Even
assistant coach Paul Hackett felt that Montana was throwing too many
long passes to his new receiver. "Rice is a seductive target for Joe,"
Hackett said after the Saints loss, noting that Montana was taking
sacks while waiting for long passes to develop. "The most important
thing for us is to play our game. If number one isn't open, and number
two isn't open, let's hit number three, instead of thinking Jerry,
Jerry, Jerry all the time."

Rice didn't miss any games. The next week, he caught three passes,
including a 25-yard touchdown, in a win over the Falcons.

But Rice soon began to slump, dropping passes in losses to the Bears
and Lions. He was often wide open when balls bounced off his hands.
Walsh re-inserted Solomon as the starter, though Rice still played
more snaps than the veteran. Rice's confidence began to wane. Rice
dropped two passes and fumbled against the Chiefs in a game that the
Niners won 31-3. The team coasted to a victory, but the rookie had
what Walsh called "a personal crisis" on the sidelines. "We all had a
visit with him," Walsh said, noting that veterans Dwight Clark and
Solomon were doing their best to help Rice along. "He's a 21-year-old
man going through a learning process."

Rice was learning, but the Niners were falling off the playoff chase.
There was plenty of blame to go around. The aging defense wasn't
mounting a pass rush. Halfback Wendell Tyler, who had beaten the
fumbling habit in 1984, was back to his ball-dropping ways. Montana
was at the center of unsubstantiated drug rumors. But the easiest guy
to blame was the kid who cost the team several draft picks, the
newcomer who replaced a productive veteran and dropped half the balls
thrown to him.

The Judgment of History
Rice's rookie year was just two decades ago, but it's hard to picture
the main characters in the drama as they were then. You just can't
take those bronze busts off the wall and make them flesh-and-blood
again.

Montana was a champion, and an All-Pro, but he was mortal, capable of
bad games and slumps, vulnerable to newspaper speculation and
talk-radio skepticism. Clark was just 28 and among the best receivers
in the league. Roger Craig made his breakthrough that season, rushing
and receiving for 1,000 yards each; for the first half of the season,
though, he was the second option behind Tyler in the running game.
Walsh was acknowledged as a top coach, but he still had to face the
heat in press conferences after a loss, and his reputation as the
NFL's great offensive innovator was not yet established. In fact, the
term "West Coast Offense" wasn't used in San Francisco in 1985, though
writers alluded to Walsh's short-passing system many times. The 49ers
roster was filled with names like Fred Dean and Russ Francis. When
they faced the Saints, the Niners defense had to stop an aging Earl
Campbell.

And then there was the 21-year-old Rice. He spent so many years as the
league's distinguished veteran that it's shocking to imagine him as a
jittery rookie, one false move from the bench. It seems unfathomable
that he was once Santonio Holmes or Chad Jackson. But in a San
Francisco Chronicle article from late October of 1985, Tom FitzGerald
compared Rice, unfavorably, to the other rookie wideouts from the
class of 1985. Rice had 18 catches for 295 yards at that point. Eddie
Brown of the Bengals had 29 catches for 469 yards. Gary Clark had 31
receptions, but he spent a year in the USFL. Rice only topped Al Toon,
the first receiver taken in the draft, who had just eight catches at
that point. "Rice may have to cook a little longer," FitzGerald
concluded.

But while Rice was on the front burner, Solomon stewed. Solomon was a
playoff hero in 1984, catching two postseason touchdown passes after
hauling in 40 regular season passes. Just 10 months later, he was
relegated to mop-up duty. He was a nominal starter, but Walsh would
put Rice in the lineup after the first snap, using Solomon as a third
wideout for the rest of the game. Solomon caught 10 passes in the
Niners' first two games, then 10 more in their next nine. Columnists
tittered that Rice's drop total was approaching Solomon's reception
total.

There even seemed to be some dissension among the Niners coaches when
Walsh stood before the media in that November press conference and
defended his rookie wide receiver. Writer Charles Bricker quoted
Hackett one day after the conference in the San Jose Mercury News:
''We thought initially that we could find the right balance between
the use of Freddie and Jerry," he said. "But after the Raiders game,
where Jerry did so well, we just thought he really had arrived. Now,
the pendulum has swung the other way."

Hackett's statement contradicted Walsh's roundabout suggestion that
Solomon was washed up. "I can only say so much about Freddie. It would
be foolish if we weren't throwing him a lot of passes if he were open
and catching them and running ... At some point, you don't play quite
as well. You don't have quite the stamina you once had. You don't have
quite the quickness you once had. We all have to face that. So, you
have to take a stand squad-wise on those kinds of things."

Walsh saw the future; its name was Jerry Rice. But he also had the
present to worry about, and his team was struggling to stay in playoff
contention. "Walsh has made a lot of critical decisions in his seven
years as coach of the 49ers — some brilliant, some not so brilliant,"
Bricker wrote. "If the 49ers fail to make the playoffs this season
after winning the Super Bowl, he might be severely judged by sports
historians for his use of Solomon and Rice."

Footsteps and Gloves
For every pass that Jerry Rice dropped, there was another theory about
why he dropped it.

In late October of 1985, the San Francisco Chronicle asked Archie
Cooley about Rice's troubles. "The work habits in the pros have hurt
him," Rice's college coach said. "He's a workaholic but they're not
working him enough in practice ... Now, they just toss a few balls to
him in practice and go in and look at films."

The same article quoted Walsh with a different theory: Rice was
running for glory without securing the ball. "At Mississippi Valley,
when he caught the ball, the next thing he'd be thinking of doing is
spiking the ball (in the end zone), " Walsh said. In another
interview, Walsh suggested that Rice was hearing footsteps.

And then there were the gloves. Rice was a bare-handed receiver in
college, but Clark and Solomon wore gloves. "It made them look really
distinctive," Rice said of his decision to emulate the successful
veterans. Rice's gloves became the most scrutinized clothing items in
the Bay Area for weeks, as Rice hemmed and hawed about keeping them.
Finally, after the Chiefs game, the gloves came off. "I had to get
back to my hands. My hands got me here."

The bare hands didn't help immediately. Just days after his head coach
defended him, Rice had his worst game as a pro. In front of 57,000
fans in a Monday night game at Candlestick, Rice dropped three more
passes. The Niners won, 19-6, thanks in part to a 27-yard touchdown
catch by Solomon.

But Walsh didn't change his stance. Rice remained the starter. He took
extra practice reps after the Seahawks game. Teammates stood by him.
"Freddie Solomon helped me a lot," Rice said. "My teammates kept their
confidence in me." Walsh and Hackett started looking for ways to get
him the ball. Against the Redskins the next week, Rice took a reverse
handoff and ran 77 yards for a touchdown. Unfortunately, the play was
negated by a holding penalty. Rice didn't have a spectacular game, but
the Niners won 35-8 and found themselves back in the playoff race.

Better than Anyone Else
Week 14 found the Niners facing the Rams in a game that would decide
the NFC West. It was a huge game between two of the best teams in the
conference. There would even be halftime entertainment: the rock band
Starship performed their hit, "We Built This City." Despite this, fan
excitement was high.

Walsh and Hackett's pre-game script called for a healthy dose of Jerry
Rice. Hackett later said that the game plan included "three or four
specific plays" for Rice among the first 25. The first play couldn't
be any more specific: the Niners opened the game with the same reverse
that Rice ran the week before. Rice gained 44 yards this time. And
again the gain was wiped out by a penalty. But three short receptions
netted five, three and 15 yards, and the five-yarder should have been
much longer: Rice broke a tackle, but a referee signaled that his
forward progress was stopped.

"After that, he got a hot hand," Hackett said after the game. "We kept
using him because he was doing it better than everybody else."

The Niners led 7-3 at halftime, but the Rams started the third quarter
with a 96-yard kickoff return touchdown. Later in the quarter,
Montana, facing a heavy rush, rolled out of the pocket and saw Rice
isolated against safety Nolan Cromwell. Cromwell was a Pro Bowl
player, but it was still a mismatch. Rice hauled in a 66-yard
touchdown to take the lead. Later in the game, Montana saw Rice
singled-up on a cornerback and threw a 52-yard strike that led to a
one-yard touchdown by Craig.

By the end of the game, Rice had 10 catches for 241 yards and a
touchdown. The 241 yards broke a team record. Ironically, the Niners
lost the game, but Rams defenders knew what Walsh knew: Rice was
special. "I think the nickname that man's got, 'All-World' or
whatever, is deserved," said Rams free safety Johnny Johnson after the
game. "The man's got unbelievable speed and a great burst." Local
writers who advocated for Rice's benching suddenly changed their
attitudes. "Somebody say 'I told you so,' and get it over with,"
Kristin Huckshorn wrote in the Mercury News.

Rice had a big game, but could he repeat it? The rookie himself was
sure he could. "I feel very comfortable and can go out there and just
play my type of ball now," he said. "Everything just seems to be
falling into place."

The following week, Rice gained 82 receiving yards against the Saints.
In the season finale, he caught seven passes for 115 yards against the
Cowboys. He even scored on a reverse that wasn't called back for a
holding penalty. The touchdown padded a Niners lead that allowed them
to clinch a Wild Card berth. By Christmas, Rice the disappointment had
become Rice the viable Rookie of the Year candidate. Fellow receiver
Eddie Brown took the AP honors, but Rice was named the NFC Rookie of
the Year by UPI.

The Niners were bounced out of the playoffs early; Rice caught four
passes for 45 yards in a 17-3 loss to the Giants. But they wouldn't be
away from the Super Bowl for long.

A Forgotten Footnote
Twenty-one years and two days after Walsh stared down his critics and
second-guessers and stuck with his troubled rookie, the 49ers will
honor Jerry Rice, their greatest player ever, perhaps the greatest
player ever.

The struggles of 1985 aren't even a distant memory. They are a
forgotten footnote for most fans. Rice's season-ending numbers — 49
catches, 927 yards — obscure all evidence of a troubled rookie season.
Only diehard fans, and perhaps Rice himself, truly remember that for a
few months his name was synonymous with dropped passes.

We can't judge Rice's critics too harshly. Most of the things that
were said about Rice at the time were true. There were times when he
hurt the team. The 49ers might even have won one or two more midseason
games if Solomon had a larger role in the offense.

But no one was beating the Bears that year, and Walsh knew there was
no reason to slow Rice's development so he could rent Solomon for a
few more weeks. Walsh was swapping out the Clark-Dean-Francis Niners
for the Rice-Craig-Charles Haley-Tom Rathman-Brent Jones Niners,
rebuilding around Montana. By 1986, they were division champs again,
despite an injury to Montana. In 1987, they were 13-2, winning their
final three games 124-7. They were Super Bowl champs after the 1988
season, with Rice catching 11 passes in the victory over the Bengals.

Now, Rice is retired, Walsh is battling leukemia and the Niners are
preparing to move to the suburbs. It's a fitting time to remember the
glory days. But we must always remember them as they really were. Rice
didn't start his career with one foot in Canton. He really had one
foot on a banana peel for most of his rookie season.

The next immortal, the player we'll be writing about in 20 years, is
probably battling for his job right now, dropping passes or fumbling
and having personal crises on the bench. Jerry Rice remembers. And we
remember.

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