It's Time

Actually, it's way past time for Cris Carter to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Tomorrow will be the sixth time that he's been a finalist. He should have made it in his first year of eligibility. Certainly no later than his second. If the voters had watched him play football, watched him catch footballs, he'd be in Canton already. No one has ever caught the football better. No one has worked the sidelines and the back of the end zone better. The voters only look at stats. They rarely look at how those stats are attained. The voters let stats, biases and quotas do their work for them. Even so, Cris Carter has the stats: 1101 catches (4th all time) for 13,899 yards (9th) for 130 touchdowns (4th). Even when the exploding passing game of today and tomorrow leave the receiving numbers of Carter and others in the dust, it does nothing to diminish the incredible receiving skills of Carter. When you want to show a young football player how to play the receiver position, you put in a tape of Cris Carter. The only thing that any receiver has to do is catch the football. A few receivers caught more passes. A few receivers scored more touchdowns. A few more gained more yards. No one ever caught the football better than Cris Carter.

On December 18, 1995, I was in the stands of Candlestick Park for a Monday Night game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Minnesota Vikings. The 49ers were the defending Super Bowl champions. They were a dominant team and Steve Young and Jerry Rice were on fire that night. The Vikings were immediately down 21-0 at the end of the 1st quarter. It looked pretty ugly for the Vikings that night. Then Cris Carter slowly, steadily, incredibly led his team back. This was a remarkable game to watch. It was incredible to be there. Jerry Rice and Cris Carter seemed to be dueling. Two of the greatest receivers to ever play the game put on a show. The 49ers won the game 37-30. It would have been a disaster if not for the play and drive of Carter.

I was shocked when I saw the box score the next morning. I guessed that Carter and Rice each had about 10 catches for 150-175 yards. Carter actually had 12 catches for 88 yards and 2 TDs. Rice, on the other hand, had the best game of his amazing career. 14 catches for 289 yards and 3 TDs. He even ran the ball once for 10 yards and nearly 300 yards of total offense. Incredible. Carter had only 88 yards when it seemed like twice that. I realized then that every one of Carter's yards meant so much. Each gained a much needed 1st down or touchdown. Each moved the chains. Each drove his team. This takes nothing away from Rice's incredible game. It just shows the false path of stats. The impact on the game is not always shown in the numbers. That night, it felt like Carter and Rice had similar games. They made similar impacts even though Carter gained only a fraction of the yards that Rice gained.

Despite the comments of Randy Moss this past week, Jerry Rice is the standard by which all receivers are compared. Moss may have been the most physically gifted receiver to ever play football but Rice is the best. Nothing that I say about Carter takes away from Rice. Carter is the best pass catcher that I have ever seen. Better than Rice, Moss and the rest. Carter was also the best at working the borders of the football field. As a big fan of receivers, Carter was among the most fun to watch because he was so technically sound. Hands, body positioning, sidelines, everything. He was beautiful to watch. When people meet to talk of the best receivers to ever play the game, Cris Carter is in that conversation. As such, he should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He's waited long enough when he shouldn't have waited at all.