Quote:
Originally Posted by jsarno
Rice once said that Young was one of the best QB's of all time and helped him acheive his lofty stats, and Young helped Rice become better. So Rice himself believes that Young made him better. I don't know if that was a humble comment or not, but Young made everyone around him better.
Also, how do you explain that after Young retired, Rice had the worst back to back seasons of his career?
|
If you look you can clearly see a changing of the guard those 2 seasons you are speaking of. T.O. was on the 49ers and if you look at the stats you can see that T.O. was taking away balls that probably would have gone Rice's way.
Rice in 1999 had 830 yards, 12.4 y/r, with 5td's, T.O. in 1999 754 yards, 12.6 y/r, and 4 td's. Then in 2000 Rice had 805 yards, 10.7y/r, 7 td's, T.O. in 2000 1451 yards, 15 y/r, and 13 td's. So you can see that they were bringing in T.O. and pushing out Rice. Also, to say that Rice's decline those years had everything to do with Young and not the fact that he was getting old is crazy. At the time of Youngs retirement Rice had already started for 16 years. Father time was bound to catch up to him...