Montana moves San Francisco from cellar doldrums to superdreams
The two-minute warning, for San Franciscans looking back at a glorious football season and forward to this Sunday's Super Bowl, has come to mean two minutes until Joe Montana. Thanks partly to his good timing in going to a football team that was without a great quarterback three years ago—and without a great anything else for that matter except maybe a great coach—Joe Montana's gifts and charms are coming out just at the perfect moment. That should not be a big surprise. Timing is his strength. He was made for certain moments, and was kept from them for a be wildering period at Notre Dame, but they are here now.
With two minutes, and still 49 yds. to go in the conference championship game against the Dallas Cowboys, Montana's will was the wonder, and people across the country started getting the fever. "Most quarterbacks lose control right about here," says Coach Bill Walsh, whose time has arrived as well, "and they start getting their time outs ready in their mind and they're trying to think of everything and they can't think."
Their control begins to waver; Montana's becomes focused. Such drives are his trademark. In three more plays he drove the 49ers to the 13 only to miss an unattended receiver in the end zone. "It kind of shook me up a bit," he would say later, "because there it was—he was open. How many times is it going to be there for you?" Even that flicker of concern did not show, not to the crowd, not to his teammates. Montana sent Lenvil Elliott around left end to the six. Time out. Third and three, with 58 sec. on the clock.
Unlike everyone else, the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers sees the live play in slow motion. He sees the receiver he will throw the ball to, and he sees the linebacker he must loft the ball over, and, on those fortunate occasions when he is not lying on the ground by this time, he sees the ball in flight. Joe's first target on this play, Freddie Solomon, was covered. Wide Receiver Dwight Clark stationed himself at the back of the end zone and then went sliding in the direction Joe was darting. Under pressure and leaning the wrong way, Montana let go, and Clark leaped for a ball aimed where he would get it or no one could. The extra point was good, and when the Cowboys tried to rally, they fumbled. By 28-27, the 49ers were going to Super Bowl XVI.
"We stopped them pretty good most of the game," lamented Charlie Waters, the Cowboy safety, "but that last drive for some reason, was unstoppable." And Waters' coach, Tom Landry, who doesn't usually say anything so impolitic, or feel anything so publicly, murmured: "Montana has to be the key. There really is nothing else there except him."
Roger Staubach and John Brodie were there, on the sidelines, Cowboy and 49er quarterbacks of another time. "I'll tell you, he's something special," said Staubach. Brodie senses something more. "I saw Joe Montana the first time three years ago. He walked into the room and I said, 'There's a man.' I can't define it for you. He knows what he's doing. You know it and he knows it. Joe Montana, I think, will become the best quarterback who ever played the game."