Gold Jacket Spotlight: Noted talker Cris Carter backed up his words

If you’re going to talk the talk in the National Football League, you’d better be able to walk the walk as well.

Wide receiver CRIS CARTER did both in a 16-year pro career that culminated with his election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013 and this week is revisited in the Gold Jacket Spotlight. 

Known by opponents as one of the game’s gifted “trash talkers,” teammates saw Cris as someone who always told it like he saw it.

“Cris was the kind of person where he was going to say something about everything …,” Randall Cunnigham, his teammate at the time with the Vikings, said in an interview. “He was going to comment to the lineman. He was going to go to the defense and tell them, ‘You guys need to do something.’ ”

Translation: “You can’t cover me one on one.”

Once Cris’ career got rolling in the mid-1990s, few were better at his position.

In the eight seasons from 1993 to 2000, Cris surpassed 1,000 receiving yards each year, led the league in touchdown catches three times and did not miss a game. (Notably, he played all 16 regular-season games 13 times in his career, demonstrating durability that ended in 234 games played.)

From 1995 to 2000, Cris would go on a historic stretch: 571 receptions for 7,129 yards and 71 touchdowns, including a career-high and NFL best 17 TDs in 1995.

He was rewarded with Pro Bowl nods all eight of those years and later would be named to the NFL’s All-Decade Team of the 1990s.

For his career, Cris totaled 1,101 regular-season receptions (still sixth all time) for 13,899 yards (13th all time) and 130 touchdowns (fourth all time).

Talk alone doesn’t lead to that kind of production; hard work does. But it first would take a humbling experience for Cris with his first team.

After a shaky start to his career in Philadelphia — three seasons that gave no indication of the Hall of Fame career to come — Cris was cut. He needed a second chance, which he got in Minnesota, and he adopted an even deeper appreciation for what it would take to succeed.

“He would get the JUGS machine, and he would just sit there (catching balls),” quarterback Rich Gannon, a teammate of Cris’ during his early years in Minnesota, said of his work ethic. 

Cris attributes his success in the pros to humble roots and working through tough times growing up in Middletown, Ohio.

“I used to never think we were going to make it out of here, man,” Cris said in an interview. “It’s not like something you ever forget.”

Cris found the “way out” with the Ohio State Buckeyes’ football team and put the sports world on notice as a freshman when he totaled 648 yards and eight touchdowns in his first season, then set a Rose Bowl record for receiving with 172 yards on nine catches.

The game remains ingrained.

“I love football,” Cris said in his enshrinement speech. “I love this game. This game gave me identity. It gave me a sense of purpose.”