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Niners win battle of bay on second chance

By Greg Beacham
Monday November 04, 2002

OAKLAND – Jose Cortez seized his second chance to win the Battle of the Bay – and Jerry Rice didn’t get much of a chance at all. 

After missing a short field goal as regulation ended, Cortez made a 23-yard field goal seven minutes into overtime as the San Francisco 49ers beat the Oakland Raiders 23-20 Sunday. 

Rice, who set every significant NFL receiving record during 16 seasons with the 49ers, had six catches for 74 yards for the Raiders. But when the game was on the line, he paced on the sideline as San Francisco controlled the ball for more than 15 straight minutes to end the game. 

Cortez made the final kick, but the victory really belonged to Jeff Garcia and the San Francisco offense, which held the ball for the last 6 1/2 minutes of regulation and all of overtime. 

Garcia was 25-of-36 for 282 yards, completing 17 of his 19 passes after halftime to keep the 49ers moving relentlessly downfield. Terrell Owens caught 12 passes for 191 yards, including several key third-down grabs. 

But Cortez sent the Coliseum crowd into delirium and added another remarkable chapter to this entertaining rivalry when he shanked a 27-yard field-goal attempt on the last play of the fourth quarter, leaving the game tied at 20. 

But the 49ers (6-2) won the coin toss and simply never stopped moving, with Garcia completing more than a dozen consecutive passes. That set up Cortez for another kick, and this time he made no mistake. 

The Raiders have lost four straight following a 4-0 start. 

Rich Gannon was 18-of-28 for 164 yards, ending his NFL-record streak of six straight 300-yard games. 

Garcia hit Tai Streets with a 2-yard TD pass in the middle of the end zone with 12:57 left in regulation, giving San Francisco a 20-13 lead. But Gannon completed a fourth-down pass to Porter to extend the next drive, which ended with a 10-yard TD run by Charlie Garner with 6:28 left. 

On the final drive of regulation, the 49ers moved from midfield to the Oakland 9 with deliberate precision that exhausted the Raiders’ timeouts and silenced the Coliseum. But Cortez, who had made 12 straight field goals entering the game, pushed the easy kick wide left. 

In the first regular-season meeting of teacher and student, Owens outshone Rice – but only because the 49ers simply wouldn’t allow Rice, Gannon and company on the field. 

Excelling against the Raiders’ spotty bump-and-run coverage, Owens got open repeatedly in the middle of Oakland’s secondary. Even the return of Pro Bowl cornerback Charles Woodson, who’d missed the last seven weeks with a broken shoulder, didn’t slow down Owens in his biggest game of the season. 

The players claimed they don’t have any special enmity for one another, but the rivalry brought the first sellout crowd of the season to the Coliseum. 

Thousands of Raiders fans in full regalia booed the Niners at every turn, but fans of both teams sat peacefully together in every section.