By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

66. Larry Centers – Signed by the Bills in 2001

Larry Centers has a unique spot in pro football history. He’s one of the few running backs who is known more for his receiving than his running.

The Cardinals took Centers in the fifth round of the 1990 draft, and it took him a couple of years to find his niche. He caught 50 passes in 1992, and that number went up until it reached 101 in 1995. Centers stayed in Arizona through 1999, when he jumped to Washington. There he caught a total of 150 passes over two years.

The Bills thought the 33-year-old could help their passing game as a free agent. He was already the NFL’s all-time leader in receptions by a running back, and he padded his total in Buffalo. Centers caught 80 more passes in 2001 and was picked for the Pro Bowl. He had 43 more catches in 2002. Centers was let go by the Bills at that point, and he spent the last season of his career with New England.

Here he is in action:

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *