Renaldo Nehemiah
(by Ed Agner)
Mmm, speed. The NFL loves speed
over pretty much everything. Be a smallish and slowish but good
college lineman or a smart QB without the physical tools that makes Mel
Kiper need to change his shorts and you've got next to no chance at
getting a serious shot at the NFL. Be faster than high school
lovin', even if you have no other discernible football skills and
you'll get all kinds of interest from NFL teams.
Hey, no one said life was fair.
And it's football's speed
addiction that makes for all kinds of interesting and amusing
results. Now, normally most NFL teams will let colleges do the
dirty work in trying to convert men who are accustomed to running in
shorts and tank tops into speed burning wide receivers or corner backs
or kick returners. But now and then some NFL executive tries to
think outside the box - normally Al Davis and normally to tragicomedic
results - to the amusement of the rest of the league and all its fans.
Hey, Dallas turned Bob Hayes into
a HOF level WR. Isn't the discovery of the next Bob Hayes worth a
little time and investment?
Sure. Unless it's Renaldo
Nehemiah.
Renaldo Nehemiah was a world class
high hurdler who missed his shot at the gold thanks to the US boycott
of the 1980 Summer Olympics.
Bill Walsh was coming off his
first Super Bowl title and the ego we all grew to loathe was just
taking shape.
It was a marriage made in heaven.
(Before you start - yes, I know
all about former Raider and world class sprinter Ron Brown. But
at least Brown became a perfectly acceptable kick returner - that and
he suckered himself on to the Rams before he was a Raider. I'll
have plenty of Raider self-loathing sprinkled throughout this without
picking too much at those old wounds, thank you.)
Anyway,
the signing got a Sports Illustrated cover and all kinds of
hullabaloo. He was to be Bob Hayes v. 2.0. Nehemiah was a
world class athlete! Bill Walsh was a genius! This HAD to
work!
Hey, Nehemiah was a high
hurdler! Jumping the high hurdles was kind of like jumping over a
pile of players. Shoot, it was practically the same.
Perfect!
Well, hurdles don't hit. And
Nehemiah had little in the way of a football background. And he
was not a very big man - Total Football II lists him a 6'1" 181, if
that's true then the Zendejas brothers were all pert near William
Perry. It was EXACLTLY like an Al Davis experiment.
To be fair, Renaldo Nehemiah was
about as good as notorious 49er first round flop, J.J. Stokes.
Hmm, now that I think of it - neither would take a hit, neither had
good hands, neither ran good routes, neither could fight off chucks at
the line of scrimmage. Wow! It's like they were the same
person!
After 3 years, Nehemiah amassed
all of 43 catches, 754 yards and 4 TD's serving mainly as a deep threat
decoy where both he and the 49ers prayed that nothing would have to
come his way - EXACTLY like an Al Davis experiment. He cut out
after the 49ers won the Super Bowl in '84 and returned to the track
world where he again competed at a world class level.
Of course the 49er's didn't end up
with too much egg on their face considering they drafted some kid named
Rice from a small college in Mississippi in the first round of the '85
draft - EXACTLY like an Al Davis experi...Dang!
SUPER
AGENT~! Renaldo Nehemiah
Buy the SI Cover
from the place I stole the image for almost $200~!!!!