THE RICE FILE
	Jerry Rice discusses his storied NFL career during the Sunday conversation with ESPN's Andrea Kremer. Check out the entire interview: Real Video Rice's career highlights: Holds 14 NFL records, has been selected to 12 Pro Bowls and earned a spot on the NFL's 75th Anniversary Team. Ranks as the all-time career leader in receptions (1,178), receiving yards (17,962) and receiving touchdowns (166). Ranks as the all-time leader in career touchdowns with 177. Has more 100-yard receiving games (64) and more 1,000-yard seasons (12) than any receiver in NFL history. Set the single-season record for receiving yards (1,848) in 1995. Set the single-season record for receiving TDs (22) in 1987 -- despite playing in only 12 games because of the players' strike. Holds the NFL record by scoring a touchdown in 13 consecutive games. Last season, he became the first player in league history to reach the 17,000-yard mark rushing or receiving. Also owns 10 Super Bowl records, including marks for career receptions (28), receiving yards in a career (512) and a game (215), career touchdowns (seven) and most career points (42). Played in 189 consecutive games before finally missing a contest due to a knee injury in 1997. Named the MVP of Super Bowl XXIII in 1989. Named NFL MVP in 1987.

Not this guy we're seeing now. Not this guy who, in a recent game against Pittsburgh, caught two passes for two yards. No way. No how.

That's not Jerry Rice. If you say it's Jerry Rice, then I say the 1973 version of Willie Mays, staggering his way around center field, is Willie Mays forever.

See, when we talk about Jerry Rice we have to remember Jerry Rice. The real Jerry Rice.

The greatest player ever to play the game. That Jerry Rice.

I don't care what you say. Jim Brown is damn close. Don Hutson's receiving records were awesome, yes. But nobody was ever better than Jerry Rice.

There's no way to quantify the memories, but if you insist, then think about it, pal. One hundred and seventy-seven touchdowns. As a receiver. That's unbelievable. The only players in history within three toll calls are Marcus Allen (145) and Jim Brown (126). They're running backs. One hundred and seventy-seven touchdowns? That's illegal.

And it's proof of something major about Jerry Rice: nobody ever wanted it more.

I once asked 49ers safety Tim McDonald what made Rice different. An obvious question, yeah. One that deserves a cliché. He works hard. But McDonald is a thoughtful guy, and he wanted to give a thoughtful answer. He was silent for awhile amid an otherwise boisterous 49ers locker room, then McDonald answered.

"It's the second guy," McDonald said.

The second guy. Come again?

"Jerry runs his routes to beat the second guy," McDonald said.

Beat the second guy. Come again?

"He doesn't run his routes against the cornerback," McDonald said. "He figures he's got the cornerback beat. So he knows that someone else is coming to help. And that's who he's running his route against.

"Nobody else does that."

It kind of makes sense, then, to use "the second guy" as the metaphor for Rice's life. Rice has never truly been able to explain why he always wants to beat the second guy, but all his life it has been the case. His parents in Crawford, Miss. -- the bricklayer father, Joe Nathan, and his mother, Eddie B., -- raised eight children, but none was as obsessed with beating that demon as Jerry. As Jerry reports, all his brothers and sisters are fine citizens -- "none are in jail, none are AWOL," he once said -- but none has spent seemingly all his life trying to beat something no one else can see.

Rice has never enunciated it, only to say that he still, after all these years, feels insecure. He says he doubts himself. It's what pushed him to make that absurd comeback in 1997, making it back on to the field for the fateful night of Monday, Dec. 15, at Candlestick Park. It was the night Joe Montana's jersey was to be retired. Rice told ESPN a month earlier that he would be back for it. That he had torn his ACL only three months earlier didn't matter. It was something else for Rice to beat. The injury was the first guy. Coming back for Joe's night was the second guy.

	Jerry Rice has reached the end zone more times than anyone in NFL history.

He beat the second guy. He came back that night. He caught a touchdown. It was unforgettable theater

And then he broke his kneecap.

There has been plenty of discussion about what drove Rice to come back that night. Many said it was ego. Pure, unadulterated ego. Many said it was stupidity. Rice only further damaged a knee in a body that wasn't getting any younger. Others said it could have cost the 49ers a shot at the Super Bowl. After all, they hosted the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game that year. If Rice had waited that extra month to make his debut, perhaps his knee would have been stronger. He would have made a difference.

I'm here to say we finally have our answer as to why he came back.

It very well might have been ego that drove Rice to come back. It most certainly was stupid. But looking back through the prism of time, we see that it could never have been any other way.

To repudiate Rice for coming back that night is to repudiate Rice's whole career. In life, you take the good with the bad. There are gray areas. And Rice's ego, his drive, his will, his talent always have meshed into a gray area. In Rice's gray area, we had beauty, and we had pain. We had a career in which he caught more passes for more yards and for more scores than anyone, ever. And we had ugliness, like that comeback.

Hey, nobody liked to see Rice complain after winning the Super Bowl XXIII MVP about not getting enough endorsements. But Rice can't control his fire. Only react to it.

So all those years from 1985 on, when Rice spent those otherwise anonymous March mornings, in his fourth hour of working out, of running that same damn hill on the peninsula south of San Francisco, he never put out that fire. It was a hearth that warmed us with unreal gifts. Super Bowls. MVPs. Gorgeous Sundays in the fall, watching his legs churn, his eyes grow wide, coming hard on an end-around. Steaming toward the end zone where, once he reached it, he ached to return.

Rice had to come back that night. For the same reason he had to make it from little Mississippi Valley State into the NFL history books forever. For the same reason that his departure from the NFL, an inevitability very soon, will be painful and perhaps unsightly, as it is right now.

For the same reason he has been the best damn player any one of you will ever see.

Brian Murphy of the San Francisco Examiner writes a weekly "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" column for ESPN.com.