Mr. Raye, Mr. Gore's calling

<p>SAN FRANCISCO -Think back to the 49ers’ first game. The 49ers had flown home to the Bay Area from Phoenix feeling good about the victory.</p><p>Well, mostly everybody. Frank Gore wasn’t feeling so hot. He had been told a thousand times the Niner offense would go through him, and he had gained — count them — 30 measly yards in that dome that looks like a stranded spaceship in the middle of the desert. He wanted to go to sleep but couldn’t sleep even though it was 2 a.m. He kept going over those crummy plays, tacklers nailing him in the backfield and him not gaining yardage.</p><p>Then he found himself doing the strangest thing. He picked up the phone and dialed the number of offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye. He figured if he was up obsessing over the running game, Raye would be up, too. Question to Raye: Did Gore wake him up that night?</p><p>“I should say,” Raye said minutes after the Niners beat Seattle.</p><p>The coach had been slumbering, perhaps dreaming about long runs, the kind of runs Gore had against the Seahawks — a touchdown run of 79 yards, and after that a TD run of 80. That would have been a nice dream, except it got interrupted by the ring and Raye mumbled hello and there was Gore, agitated, on the other end.</p><p>The call did not exactly surprise Raye. Marcus Allen once made a similar late-night call after a poor game. “He was feeling bad,” Raye said. “He hadn’t had the kind of opening-day performance he had anticipated. He just wanted someone to hug, rub and lie to him. Basically the call was more of a reassurance — we’re going in the right direction. And he hadn’t played. You have to remember that he didn’t play very much this summer, so he expected to jump out last week and when it didn’t happen, he basically just wanted someone to talk to.”</p><p>Apparently, Raye did just the right amount of hugging, rubbing and lying. Against the Seahawks, Gore ran for 207 yards. The jewels in his crown were those two TD runs. And they were sudden. Gore was at the line of scrimmage and before you could make sense of it, he was past the line of scrimmage and you saw him streaking away. On the first one, Gore was aware of seeing, “me and a safety and the referee. I kind of cut behind the referee and made him go around.”</p><p>That wasn’t all he did. As he ran toward the end zone, he looked up at the big screen and watched himself darting toward the goal line. He wasn’t admiring himself. He was doing research on the run, as it were. He doped out the pursuit and told himself, “If I go right I make them go a long way.” So he veered right and made them go a long way and he scored the TD. </p><p>I asked Raye what makes Gore an elite back. “He has what all the great ones have,” Raye explained, “great second-level vision. I asked what second-level vision is. “When he gets past the line of scrimmage,” Raye said, “he sees the linebackers and the secondary and he sets that and coupled with his speed I haven’t seen that since Eric Dickerson.”</p><p>You must understand it was rare for Raye to speak after a game. He usually dashes out of the locker room, but the Niners gave him the go-ahead to talk. Turns out he’s quite a talker. Someone asked about opposing defenses stacking the box against the 49ers, putting eight men near the line to stop the run. “Once you break that (the eight-man front), that’s it,” Raye said. “Once you break that, there’s nobody home. That’s what we have to do. Run. We run.”</p><p>Oh, one more thing. Someone asked Gore if he intended to phone Raye late Sunday night to discuss the Seahawks game. Yes, Gore said, most definitely yes. </p><p>I don’t know about you but I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.</p><p>For more on the world of sports in general and the Bay Area in particular go to the Cohn Zohn at blog.pressdemocrat.com/cohn. You can reach Staff Columnist Lowell Cohn at lowell.cohn@pressdemocrat.com.</p>