Friday, Jul 4, 2008
He was the greatest quarterback ever, but when he had a chance to be a leader in real life, he punked out.
Aug 4, 2000 | I woke up Saturday morning feeling great. My hero, Joe Montana, the greatest team-sport athlete -- Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky not excepted -- of the last two decades, was going to be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Montana was the greatest big-game athlete of my era; I had come of age with him, followed him through high school and college, and staked my reputation on his when he came to the pros. I set my VCR to tape his induction ceremony and went to see an advance screening of the upcoming football comedy "The Replacements" on a high. By the time I got home, the high had passed. I decided not to watch the tape of Montana's induction.
Last season, everyone made a big deal about the Rams' Kurt Warner being a "regular" guy, a "lunch pail" quarterback. Montana, product of a Pennsylvania mill town, had Warner beat by nearly three decades. Nothing is more blue collar than the small Pennsylvania towns that produce football players like Mike Ditka, Jack Lambert, Joe Namath and Joe Montana, and no one took a tougher route out of the life than Montana, who chose Notre Dame -- a school where a football player had to at least pretend to be a college student -- over numerous sun and surf schools.
At Notre Dame, playing for Dan Devine, a coach whose idea of progressive offense was white guys block, black guys go long, Montana was usually left on his own in a big game to pull the Irish out of the hole the game plan had put them in. Those who mitigate Montana's pro success by stressing Bill Walsh's influence are forgetting his college successes.
In 1978, for instance, he led the second greatest college football comeback I've ever seen: With the team down to arch-rival Southern Cal 24-6 in the fourth quarter, Montana drove the Irish to a 25-24 lead with 37 seconds left against a USC secondary that featured a young hotshot named Ronnie Lott. (The Trojans won on a last-second field goal.) In that season's Cotton Bowl against Houston, he led the greatest comeback I've ever seen, bar none. On an ice-covered field, he rallied the Irish from a 34-12 fourth quarter deficit to a 35-34 victory with three TDs and two two-point conversions. Make that three two-point conversions; one had to be replayed after a penalty.
On paper, Montana is the NFL's all-time second-rated passer, behind only his 49ers successor, Steve Young. But on the field, Young was a disappointing underachiever, winning just one Super Bowl and losing six times in the playoffs, while Montana was the greatest clutch passer in NFL history. Young, John Elway and Dan Marino were better athletes, better passers; Joe Montana was the greatest quarterback of all.
The outstanding image I have of him is not from one of his four Super Bowl victories but from the NFC Championship Game in 1981. In a photo taken from the 49ers end zone, you can see him, arms upraised, signaling "TD" even as Dwight Clark tumbled to the turf with "The Catch," which beat the Dallas Cowboys 28-27 and sent the Niners to their first Super Bowl, against Cincinnati. For years, nothing tarnished that image -- until I saw this crappy movie Saturday.
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