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September 10, 2003

In a game of behemoths, he was a 42 Regular, a guy who in his prime would turn heads in a room -- not with the width of his shoulders or the size of his forearms, but with his electric smile and his Robert Redford eyes.

He would turn heads on a football field with his unflagging grace under pressure, with his competitive fire, with his firm belief that nothing -- and especially a game -- ever was over until it was over.

Some time-and-memory questions: Did Joe Montana ever lose a game?  Did Joe Montana ever not complete a pass? Did Joe Montana ever fail to finish a drive for the 49ers?

In order, some time-and-memory answers: he did, but only occasionally. He did, but only once in a while. And yes, every so often, but not very often.

I saw this Superman in Clark Kent clothes play a lot of football games.

I was there for his four Super Bowl victories (he was given three Super Bowl MVP awards, but it could just as well have been four). In 1980, just his second season in the NFL, I saw the 82nd player chosen in the 1979 draft turn around a 35-7 halftime deficit to New Orleans into San Francisco's record comeback 38-35 victory. I was there on the November 1986 day, two months after he had had career-threatening back surgery, when he came off the bench to throw three touchdown passes and stun the Cardinals (talk about great comebacks).

I saw a lot of other Montana specials, in person and on television, and I literally never ceased to be amazed. He pulled rabbits out of hats time after time after time…and he barely needed to take a shower. In a game of high testosterone and complex violence, he was the King of Cool, the greatest quarterback ever to put on an NFL uniform.

He didn't have the massive career numbers of Dan Marino. He wasn't a landmark classic like Johnny Unitas. He wasn't as mechanically flawless as Bart Starr. He didn't offer the white-shoed braggadocio of Joe Namath. On paper, his stats didn't match up to lot of people's.

Fortunately for us, they don't play this game on paper. They play it for four quarters, in front of capacity crowds of adrenaline-charged people, on mostly grass fields. Joe Montana was Olivier on those frantic stages, weekend after autumn weekend from 1979 through 1994, when he finished his career in a Kansas City uniform.

When I say he is -- to borrow a Muhammad Ali expression -- The Greatest, I hardly am sticking my neck out. The Joe Montana Fan Club would need to rent Candlestick Park (since renamed 3Com Park) twice, once for the 49er Faithful, then again for experts, scouts, and other admirers in the game.

"There is no other way to say it," says legendary coach and analyst John Madden. "Joe Montana was the most dominating player I have ever seen. He was the greatest quarterback ever."

The scouts and personnel people who doubted Montana's ability to be a top-flight NFL quarterback as the draft approached in 1979 have come around now, because now only fools would doubt the impact Montana had on the game.

The truth is, very few experts gave the quarterback from Notre Dame much of a chance to play with the big boys. They said he was too short (6-1 in cleats). They said he was too slow. They said he was too slight (he weighed 175 then; even later, he seldom got the needle on the scale close to 195).

But one man said that the size of his frame didn't matter, that the size of heart and size of his football brain, or coachability, as the man called it, did. This one man saw Montana's footwork in a private workout a few days before the draft and he knew he'd happened on something special.

Bill Walsh had just been named head coach of the 49ers, and he was looking for someone to manage his West Coast offense on game days.

"The workout was in Los Angeles," Walsh says, "and the first time I saw him drop from center, I said, 'This is the new Namath.' I had seen him on film from his college days at Notre Dame but seeing him in person blew me away. He had those quick, nimble feet, almost like a ballet dancer. I said, 'We've found our new quarterback.'

"Most teams had Joe going in the fifth round or even lower. We actually took some heat when we drafted him in the third round."

Walsh had the vision. No one else did.

"I'd be lying if I said that I or anyone else except Bill saw something spectacular in camp that year," says Michael Zagaris, the 49ers' team photographer for 30 years and a good athlete himself. "He didn't throw any better or worse than any other quarterbacks in camp [Steve DeBerg was the incumbent QB]. But Joe was wonderfully confident, the kind of guy you just wanted to be around. He wasn't full of himself then. He never was, even later. He was just a really cool guy."

Montana did have a Western Pennsylvania pedigree. He grew up in Monongahela, a lunch-pail town just outside of Pittsburgh. Before him, the area that was known for its coal mines and steel mines had produced George Blanda (Youngwood), Unitas (Pittsburgh), and Namath (Beaver Falls). Not long after Montana, Marino (Pittsburgh) and Jim Kelly (East Brady) would follow their footsteps into the NFL. All but Marino are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame --Montana was a member of the Class of 2000 -- and Marino will be there in 2005.

Montana and his Western Pennsylvania pals made a combined 13 Super Bowl appearances and hold dozens of regular-season and postseason passing records.

Even in that elite crowd, nobody did it better than Joe Montana. In the biggest games, he was a one-man highlight film. In four winning Super Bowls, he attempted 122 passes, completing 83 (68 percent), 11 for touchdowns with 0 interceptions. He threw 3 touchdown passes to down Marino's Dolphins 38-16 in XIX, and 5 touchdown passes to humiliate golden boy John Elway's Broncos 55-10 in XXIV.

In XXIII against the Bengals, he led the 49ers on one of the most dramatic drives in big-game history: 92 yards in barely 2 1/2 minutes, the final 10-yard touchdown pass to John Taylor coming with 34 seconds left to play.

It was how the drive began that tells you everything about the Joe Montana oeuvre. Trailing 16-13, with 3:10 remaining in Joe Robbie Stadium in Miami, the 49ers took over on their own 8-yard line. After a TV time-out, the 49ers huddled.

"Look, guys-over there," Montana said, motioning toward the stands. "It's [actor] John Candy! "

They looked.  They laughed. Then they followed their leader 92 yards down the field to the top of his mountain.

John Wiebusch was Editor in Chief of NFL publications for 32 years. The editor of NFL Insider, GameDay, PRO! magazines and the Super Bowl Game Program, he has edited and/or written more than 100 books. You can write John at WiebuschNFL