Passion play

Sporting News, The, Oct 24, 1994 by David Falkner

At the end of the 1985 season in a game against the Cowboys, Ronnie Lott, then in his glory days with the 49ers, mangled his left pinky in a brutal collision with running back Timmy Newsome. Bone fragments and parts of Lott's finger lay somewhere in the turf. Lott came out of the game briefly -- a game his team won to gain a wild-card berth in the NFC playoffs. He bore the agony of his dismembered member in the manner of all Top Guns and Terminators of sports. Enduring the pain was a religion -- or at least a line-item entry in the game's Iliad of make-believe war.

The next week, Lott had his fingers taped so he could play -- in a loss to the Giants. Over that winter, he remained in excruciating pain. He faced the next season with an awful choice: a complicated and delicate operation in which bone and skin grafting and the placement of pins in his hand might restore full use of his hand -- or, he could have the top of his finger amputated. Choice No. 1 meant missing playing time and risking reinjury. Choice No. 2 meant missing some finger but being ready -- like Arnold Schwarzenegger -- for more. Most football fans know how this came out. Lott chose to have the top of his finger chopped off and then went on to his third Pro Bowl season with the 49ers, leading the team to yet another playoff appearance.

As much as this fits the glass- and nail-eating mold in which pro football players like to cast themselves, it does not really fit Ronnie Lott, the Jets' sure Hall of Fame safety, a player who, more than most, has gained a reputation over a glorious 14-year career for top-of-the-line (or 7 yards back of the line) intelligence to go along with all that mayhem. In a survey by The Sporting News, NFL coaches were asked to name a current player who was the best candidate to be a head coach. Eight out of 20 named Lott.

Lott has done as much as anyone to feed the myth that he is a psychopath in shoulder pads. He began his career in 1981 with the 49ers when the team was just another wind current in Candlestick Park. Over the next 10 seasons, he earned seven Pro Bowl selections and four Super Bowl rings. Because of his unflagging and inspiring leadership, the 49ers became one of the strongest teams of the modern era. He switched around in the defensive backfield from cornerback to strong safety to free safety and, unbelievably, retained all-star status at each position. But, above all, he gained a reputation for the passion of his play and his equally fervent willingness to cajole teammates, and even staff and coaches, to go the extra mile.

Lott advertised his ferocious approach to the game in a 1990 book, "Total Impact." In it he described his way of hitting as "driving through" a player he was tackling rather than merely bringing him down. He was known for the way he not only stopped opponents but seemed to dismember them in the process, too. Though he was a defensive back, an elegant greyhound, he hit more like a Greyhound bus. He was Lawrence Taylor and Mike Singletary and Reggie White -- except that, playing where he did, he shouldn't have been.

Over the years, there are as many stories of Lott shots as there are of atrocities in the supermarket tabloids. Art Monk, also on his way to Canton, is in his 15th season as an NFL wide receiver, he remembers the day, the game, the moment that Lott permanently changed the feel of his body. It was September 10, 1984, 'Skins and Niners. Monk took a ball on a deep slant and never saw Lott coming. Lott hit him full force in the back.

"Most guys would just hit you," says Monk, who is now a teammate of Lott's, "but there's something about Ronnie ... it's a different feeling."

That hit, Monk says, though he never let Lott know it, "pretty much messed me up for my career."

Another memorable and well-reported hit occurred in the '89 Super Bowl victory over the Bengals. Cincinnati running back Ickey Woods was picking up big chunks of yardage early in the game. After one long carry, Lott came to the sideline and told his teammates he would put a stop to it. San Francisco defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes recalls that Lott went out and backed up his words by ramming Woods the next time he carried the ball with a body-shattering hit of such force that he was out of it from then on.

"It just knocked Ickey's spark right out of him," Rhodes says. "The game turned right then because Ickey just didn't run with the same authority after that."

True to the bullet-proof reputation he had earned over the years, Lott even found a name for the way he hit people. "Woo-lick," he called it (as in wildly screaming "woooo" at the precise moment of collision). "Let me put my perception of hard hits into simpler terms," Lott says in his book. "If you think you want to play in the NFL, and you want to find out if you can handle being hit by Ronnie Lott, here's what you do. Grab a football, throw it in the air, and before you can catch it, have your best friend belt you with a baseball bat. No shoulder pads. No helmet. Just you, your best friend and the biggest Louisville Slugger you can find.