Okay, Jersey, we get it. You can hardly believe it. Rutgers matters again. People are talking about your football team, and it's not even summer? The Scarlet Knights are Big East favorites? Your very own Ray Rice is a Heisman hopeful? Yes, it's enough to set any Garden Stater's heart aflutter.
So here it is April, and you already itch to see the kid run. It killed you when he sat out the spring game after bone chips were removed from his ankle. You love him, of course. You know what a monumental task it was for coach Greg Schiano to salvage this sunken wreck of a team from the bottom of the ol' Raritan. And you know his shiny red cruiser now hums because Rice is its motor.
You won't even entertain the notion that you might be expecting too much. Since finally tasting victory, Jersey, you need more, bigger, better. And now. Let's be honest—patience has never been your strongest virtue. Anyone who has been witness to the honking and tailgating and birdflipping on the turnpike knows that. You want results, and you want them before the next exit.
But c'mon, the Texas Bowl win over Kansas State was only four months ago. Spring ball has just ended. Not even Ray Rice can lead the State University of New Jersey to the national title or win a Heisman—or sidestep a tackler, for that matter—before he goes on summer break.
Nobody blames you for being excited, but hold your horses. Rice has left no doubt he can carry the football, but he still has to prove he can carry the team. And not for nothing, one of the best running backs in college football didn't make his biggest gains until he learned to slow things down.
WATCHING RICE wait calmly, ball tucked into the crook of his right arm as the chaos at the line of scrimmage erupts in front of him, you'd never know he wasn't always the patient sort. His mom, Janet, says Ray-Ray walked and talked before any other kid his age in his neighborhood, in New Rochelle, N.Y. At 18 months, he marched up to his grandfather, John Rice, and demanded "drawers." Days later, Ray was potty trained. When he got his first bike, he demanded, again from his grandfather, that the training wheels come off. "I said, 'Daddy, don't take those off! He's 2!' " Janet recalls. "But sure enough, there he was, the only 2-year-old at the playground riding a twowheeler." A few years later, 5-year-old Ray introduced Evel Knievel-inspired cardboard ramps to his routine and arrived for the first day of pre-K with a scraped nose, a scraped head and a cracked tooth.
Rice went headlong on the gridiron, too. As a Pee Wee baller, he thought the objects of the game were simple: run, pass, tackle. Rutgers safety Courtney Greene, who met Rice at the Boys Club when they were 4, likes to tell about a Pop Warner game in which Rice scored three touchdowns, leveled the quarterback and injured two other players—in the first quarter. At the request of opposing coaches (and moms), game officials often asked Ray to leave the field. Benched for being too good, too strong, too aggressive, he pouted as Janet and a lot of other onlookers breathed sighs of relief in the bleachers. "I tried to make him understand that just like he was my child, those other kids he was hurting were someone's children too," Janet says. "Mom, this is football!" Ray would respond as he stomped his cleats, dying to get back in the action.
To watch Janet watch her son these days from her spot a few rows behind the bench is to understand why Ray has always been raring to go. It's a miracle, in fact, that he can hold back at all. Janet is 4'11", but she outshouts every other one of the 44,000 fans in the Rutgers Stadium stands. She arrives two hours before kickoff, in time for warmups and to flex her muscles at Greene and safety Glen Lee, who also grew up with her son. She'll also flex at Coach Schiano, and he always flexes back. But mostly she yells. Before the snap, after the snap, even when
Ray is off the field and a coach is all up in his grill. "I'll yell anything," Janet says. " 'Play your game!' 'Run that ball!' 'They can't catch you!' And if Ray ignores me, I just get louder." Even when his eyes are focused on a coach, Rice will raise his hand so Mom knows he hears her, too.
Janet is, after all, the reason Ray always felt the need to hurry up and succeed at football. Ever since Pop Warner, he's seen the sport as a way to get her out of the projects. She's been a single mom since Ray was 1 and his dad, Calvin Reed, was killed in a random drive-by. Signing with Rutgers in 2005, though, gave Rice another reason to focus on his forward progress, one that was less personal and more about the chance to be part of an epic. Rice may not be from Jersey, but his heart now beats for Rutgers as passionately as that of any Passaic or Atlantic City kid. And he is determined to lift the Knights to never-before-imagined heights.
At the same time, though, he heard early on from the then-reigning tailback, Brian Leonard, that good things come to those who sit tight. Leonard, of course, knew this to be true because rock-bottom used to be Rutgers' permanent address.
Back when Leonard was being recruited, in 2001, anyone who was paying attention to Rutgers football wanted Schiano's head on a spit after a soul-crushing 80-7 loss to West Virginia. That was followed a year later by a dismal 1—11 showing. A loss to D1-AA New Hampshire lowlighted the 2004 season. The day of that particular embarrassment, Leonard, a sophomore who had rushed for 88 yards, was booed by fellow students on his walk home and found shattered beer bottles on the hood of his car when he got there.
By the end of the 2004 season, Rutgers was 4—7 and in hot pursuit of Rice, who was wavering on his commitment to Syracuse after the Orange had fired longtime coach Paul Pasqualoni. Leonard's recruiting pitch went this way: Though they weren't showing results yet, the Knights were putting in the work and heading in the right direction. After a long, bleak period, it would soon be their time. "When I learned the history, it made me want to work even harder," Rice says. "I wanted those guys to feel good when they left, like they had started something big." Patience deserves to be rewarded.
Rice, meanwhile, was coming off two straight visits to the New York State championships, allstate honors and an MVP performance in the 2005 Governor's Bowl. Leonard was in the crowd that day at Rutgers Stadium, watching Rice rush for 122 yards as he led New York's all-stars to a 14-10 win over New Jersey's. The Knights' closest approximation of a star couldn't have been too surprised, then, when Schiano moved him to fullback to make room for the fast-tracked freshman.
The situation could have been tense, but Leonard and Rice were soon as closely linked off the field as they would be on it. Leonard played the humble country boy from upstate New York with a lot to pass along, Rice the kinetic city kid with a lot to learn. And the odd couple made it work. "Brian has been through everything and gotten all the awards, and he's still the kindest person you'll ever meet," Rice says. "He taught me to be humble."
Running behind Leonard, Rice gained 1,120 yards as a freshman, and Rutgers went 7—5, earning a trip to the Insight Bowl, the Knights' first postseason bid since 1978. Rice ran for 88 yards as Rutgers led Arizona State, 24-17, at halftime. But the Sun Devils crowded the line, holding Rice to 20 second-half yards, and Rutgers fell 45-40.
The Knights offense had thrived throughout that season on causing matchup problems. Stack your defense against Rice and you were vulnerable to Leonard catching a ball out of the backfield.
Focus on neutralizing Leonard and Rice ate your lunch. Play them straight up and Rice just followed his friend downfield. "Even if it wasn't my best block, Ray would make it an effective one," Leonard says. "He always finds a way to get through to the secondary."
Rice squeezes through the tiniest of holes—four yards, seven yards, five yards—chipping away until something gives. Averaging just 5.4 yards per carry last season, Rice still gained 1,794 yards, second in the nation. In 335 attempts, he had only two runs over 50 yards: a 63-yarder to set up the clinching touchdown against Pittsburgh and a 54-yarder against Ohio. "With me, every play is not hit-thehole-at-90-miles-an-hour," Rice says. "I take what's there. I never try to do anything spectacular."
So far, so good. But soon—yes, Jersey, we know, not soon enough—it will be next season, and Leonard will be in the NFL. And that means Rice will have to be more patient than ever, watching and waiting to make his move. Certainly, no one in New Brunswick doubts he'll continue to find his way. "It's what makes him a great running back," Schiano says. "He can feel the flow of people. He knows that if he just hangs in there, he can accelerate behind them. Or if he can stretch it just a bit more, he can go out the front door."
Rice is listed at 5'9" (generous, for sure), but that doesn't hurt his stealth approach. Coaches sugarcoat his stature, saying he's compact, or that he has a low center of gravity. His teammates, naturally, are more blunt, calling him a shrimp or a fire hydrant. Says Greene with a laugh, "He's a stump." Whatever the word choice, Rice is extremely difficult for a defender to pick up until he's blowing by at full speed. And pity the guy who reaches out to stop him. "He'll rip your arm out," Schiano says.
Rice breaks tackles more often than Tiger Woods breaks par. He squats close to 600 pounds and has the hops to dunk a basketball. Would-be tacklers often let up, thinking Rice is down, then watch helplessly as he darts out from underneath them. He can hold himself up on one arm, knees up, like a tripod, supporting the big bodies of defensive linemen until he can break free. So how do you bring him down? Says Greene: "You pray."
AND THAT'S good advice for you too, Jersey. Pray for patience, the kind Rice displays when he runs. He's going to have a heavy enough load to haul without your piling on. "I tell Ray he can't listen to all those other voices," Leonard says. "He doesn't think much about the Heisman, but people close to him do, and that has to get into his head."
Back in March, Rice's girlfriend, Rutgers point guard Matee Ajavon, was named the Big East tournament's MVP after the Lady Knights defeated UConn. When Ajavon was handed her trophy, ESPN gave her a few seconds at the microphone. Grinning shamelessly, she screamed to the nation, "Ray Rice for the Heisman!" She's a born and bred Garden Stater, in case you couldn't tell.
Yes, Ajavon's voice is your voice, Jersey. But even his mom knows that no matter how loud you yell, Rice will acknowledge the noise only when he's ready. And, when he does, it won't be with anything as subtle as a wave.