#43

 

LANCE ALWORTH

The phrase is “yards after catch.” Nearly every football fan knows it and those that participate in fantasy football are especially interested in it. The yards a receiver gains after catching the ball is a key factor in distinguishing good receivers from average ones and great ones from good ones.

Lance Alworth excelled in that area before the phrase was even coined. Alworth may have been the American Football League’s first great star. He was certainly in the right place at the right time as he combined with quarterback John Hadl and a brilliant strategist in head coach Sid Gillman to give the San Diego Chargers the AFL’s premier pitch-and-catch combination. There was little recognition for Alworth, Hadl, and other AFL stars at the time, because they were competing with the NFL and their achievements were pooh-poohed, dismissed and treated as if they were the older league’s poor relations. But the AFL players knew better. They knew better because many of them had been high draft picks in the NFL and few had been pursued harder than Alworth was.

Alworth was drafted eighth overall in the 1962 NFL draft by the San Francisco 49ers. The AFL’s Oakland Raiders had drafted Alworth with the ninth spot in their draft and quickly traded his rights to the Chargers, who were a more complete team at the time and wanted a game-breaking wide receiver to give them a championship edge. San Francisco head coach Red Hickey tried to persuade Alworth to sign with his the 49ers, but he was up against Chargers assistant coach and chief recruiter Al Davis, the same Al Davis who would go on to own the Raiders. At that time, he was learning football from Gillman, a man whose innovative mind and strategic planning gave him a significant edge on the competition.

A battle between Davis and Hickey proved to be no contest. Davis sold Alworth on what the Chargers were trying to do with their offense—attack downfield through the air—and why the AFL was the place to be. The Chargers promised Alworth a no-cut contract. When Alworth informed Hickey that the Chargers had offered him such a deal, Hickey decided to match it. But Alworth knew that the 49ers were looking at him as just a piece of their business and he didn’t feel like he was truly wanted—it left a bad tasted in his mouth. Davis also promised Alworth he would play right away.

That didn’t happen, though, because Alworth suffered a freak injury in his first training camp while kicking a football. He tore a muscle in his right leg and played just four games before the end of the year, catching 10 passes and scoring three touchdowns. His numbers were remarkable after that. In the next six years, Alworth caught 384 passes for 7,747 yards and 70 touchdowns, averaging 20.2 yards every time he caught the ball. By comparison, Jerry Rice averaged 15.4 yards per reception during his career and averaged better than 20 yards per catch only once in his 20-year career.

Alworth did not have Joe Montana or Steve Young throwing him the ball, either. At the start he had an aging veteran in Tobin Rote before the strong-armed but raw Hadl arrived on the scene. Through the 1964 season, Alworth got open using his 9.6 speed (he ran the 100-yard dash as well as the 220 as a track star at the University of Arkansas). After that, however, the word was out in the AFL: in order to have a chance to cover Alworth—known by his nickname of “Bambi” for his large brown eyes and for the way he ran—you had to double-cover him. The decision forced Alworth to build up a series of moves he could use to always get him open.

Alworth learned how to make his moves by watching films of Houston Oilers wide receiver Charlie Hennigan. He saw that Hennigan ran every pattern with a purpose, whether he was getting passes thrown his way or not. “I saw that every step he made had a purpose,” Alworth explained. “When I ran a square out, it was kind of a circle. Charlie ran these crisp routes and every step counted for something. I saw there was a lot I could do to improve [my technique].”

While Alworth improved his route-running, that was never the focus of his game and Gillman never expected it to be. He wanted Alworth to get to a certain point on the field and then break off his route when Hadl expected him to make his move. The two had expert timing and the quarterback and coach always expected Alworth to come away with the ball even if it was thrown into a crowd. That was because the 6-foot-2 Alworth had superb leaping ability—at least as far as catching a football was concerned. “I played a lot of basketball when I was young and when I tried to cram it [dunk] after practice I couldn’t,” Alworth explained. “But in a game there were pictures of me going above the rim to get a rebound. The same was true in football. I could go over the linebackers and defensive backs and get it.”

That’s when Alworth’s run-after-the-catch ability took hold. He came down ready to run and didn’t need to gather himself after making a spectacular catch. His feet would hit the ground running, and the defense rarely caught him.

Alworth also took to blocking like few other wide receivers did. Gillman demanded it of him and all the Chargers receivers, but Alworth found that it was an area that benefited him as a receiver. “If I block for Paul Lowe and the running game, it makes me a more dangerous receiver,” Alworth told Sports Illustrated. “If I make a block that gets him into the open field, he’s going to want to do the same for me. And that’s just how it has worked.”

In 1978, Alworth became the first AFL player inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was an All-AFL performer seven times led the league in receiving yards and receptions three times. He still holds the Chargers franchise records for receiving touchdowns (83) and receiving yards (9,584).

Run after the catch—the term was invented for Alworth.