Jett Had the Best Name for a Speedy Wide Receiver
James Jett of the Los Angeles/Oakland Raiders had perhaps the best name of any wide receiver in the history of the National Football League.
Before Jett ever played a down for the Raiders, he ran a leg on the United States 400-meter relay team that won the gold medal in the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, with a time of 38.95 seconds.
In addition, Jett earned NCAA indoor and outdoor All-American honors at West Virginia in the 50 meters, 100 meters, and 200 meters, during his college career and finished second in the NCAA Championships at 100 and 200 meters in 1992. His best times were 10.10 seconds in the 100 and 19.91 seconds in the 200.
Jett beat the great Carl Lewis, a nine-time Olympic gold medalist, in the 100 in the United States Olympic Trials that year.
“Of course, that was like one of the most talked moments for me from a track standpoint,” Jett said of beating Lewis in the trials. “Because you know, Carl Lewis was the king, so that in itself was a milestone.
“It was a crazy situation. And the crazy thing, I don’t think I had my best race that day. But you know, it is what is.”
Even though he was a track standout, Jett went to the University of West Virginia to play football, where he was a wide receiver on a primarily running team. In his career, he caught only 67 passes for 1,384 yards and 11 touchdowns, including a 78-yarder as a senior.
Jett, who had helped Jefferson High of Shenandoah Junction, W.Va., to the state playoffs in 1988, also had 125 kick returns for 1,620 yards, giving him a total of 3,076 career all-purpose yards.
“It was I guess a combo thing between playing football and running track,” said Jett, who was elected to the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame in 2002. “I loved to do them both and I thought the track complemented the football, as far as getting in good shape.
“As far as coming up through the ranks from high school to college, I was pretty much a home guy and I wanted to stay close to home. I ended up going to West Virginia, which wasn’t that far away, and pretty much the rest, it is what it is.”
The 5-10, 176-pound Jett was undrafted in 1993 but signed as a free agent with the Raiders, and as a rookie he started only one game but caught 33 passes for 771 yards, leading the NFL with an average of 23.4 yards per catch, and scoring three touchdowns—including a 74-yarder.
Jett could hardly believe it.
“One moment that really stuck out to me was I think my first year in the league,” Jett recalled. “We were playing at home and I was out on the field. A timeout was called and at the time I was called out for staring around, and I looked at what was a lineman’s helmet.
“He had a big ass decal on the side of this big Raiders’ helmet. It didn't hit me (before) and it just hit me right at once like, ‘Damn, man, you’re playing for the Los Angeles Raiders.’ I’m like tripping out and I got nervous, and I got cold chills and it was just crazy.”
Jett played 10 seasons for the Raiders and caught 256 passes, to rank sixth in franchise history, for 4,417 yards, a 17.3-yard average, and 30 touchdowns, including an 84-yarder in 2000.
His best season was 1997 when he caught 46 passes for 804 yards and 12 touchdowns, all career highs. No coincidence, that’s the year strong-armed quarterback Jeff George came to the Raiders and hooked up with Jett.
George told Jett: “I can make you a lot of money.”
“That’s been sticking in the back of my head,” Jett said. “I think I clicked with Jeff. For him to have confidence in me, that made me want to work that much harder.”
They did click in the two years George was with the Raiders, as the following season Jett caught 45 passes for 882 yards, a 19.6-yard average, and six touchdowns, including a 75-yard touchdown.
When it comes to speed in Raiders history, the only player who compares to Jett is Hall of Fame Wide receiver Cliff Branch, another sprinter who ran 10.0 in the 100 but passed up a chance to run in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, so he could go to training camp with the Raiders.
Jett and Branch played two decades apart, so Raider Nation can only dream of what it would have been like to have them on the field at the same time.
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