The Green Bay Packers claiming Brenden Rice, the son of legendary wide receiver Jerry Rice, offers a chance to go back in time to examine one of the most painful losses in franchise history, with Brenden’s dad at the center of it.
The “Jerry Rice Fumbled” game.
It’s been more than a quarter-century since the wild-card game after the 1998 season, a 30-27 loss in San Francisco on Jan. 3, 1999, when Terrell Owens caught a 25-yard touchdown pass from Steve Young with three seconds left to shock the 11-win Packers team.
For 49ers fans – and the rest of the NFL – “The Catch II” represents a thrilling playoff memory. For Packers fans, it marked a frustrating end to the team’s mini-dynasty after trips to back-to-back Super Bowls the previous two seasons. Coach Mike Holmgren left the Packers after the season, and Green Bay missed the playoffs the next two seasons.
Holmgren went on to become head coach, general manager and executive vice president of football operations with the Seattle Seahawks, a position he accepted five days after the loss to San Francisco.
The Packers yielded 178 rushing yards to Garrison Hearst, Terry Kirby and others, and committed four turnovers in the bitter loss to the 49ers, a team Green Bay had eliminated from the postseason in each of the previous three seasons.
The thing is, Jerry Rice fumbled.
On the fifth play of San Francisco’s game-winning drive, accounting for 76 yards over nine plays, Rice hauled in his one and only catch of the game, a seemingly innocuous 6-yard connection that gave him a reception in 22 consecutive playoff games, tying Drew Pearson’s NFL record. Rice broke that mark the next week in a loss to Atlanta – the same team the Packers would have faced if advancing.
Replays showed that the Hall of Fame wide receiver fumbled before he was down, and Bernardo Harris recovered for the Packers near midfield with about 35 seconds to go. It would have sealed the victory, but Rice was immediately ruled down.
In today’s NFL, replay would have overturned the outcome, and the Packers would have won. But the NFL didn’t adopt a full-fledged replay system until 1999, the regular season after Rice’s fumble. The call on the field was what mattered here. Announcers John Madden and Pat Summerall even commented in real time that the play provided “another vote” for the league to adopt replay in the offseason.
“There’s gonna be another vote for instant replay, and it’s gonna win this year, I would say,” Madden said. “Boy, the 49ers got a few more plays right there.”
It’s one of the bigger missed calls in NFL playoff history.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Packers signing Jerry Rice’s son reminds us that Rice fumbled in 1999
Reporting by JR Radcliffe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
