Montana Wins the Big Faceoff : He Runs, Passes and Wrests the Headlines From Marino

Joe Montana can win Super Bowls. He can carve up a defense. He can drive expensive cars and he can date beautiful women. He makes lots of money and he looks a little like Barry Manilow.

But what’s it get him?

Staubach was the All-American boy. Namath sold pantyhose. Unitas wore a crewcut. Flutie is cute. In their own way, they each captured a nation’s imagination.

Montana can scramble and he throws a great short pass. Also, he’s the perfect quarterback for Bill Walsh’s system. He’s the all-time quarterback rating champion. But somehow, none of that really sells.

The quarterback who’s selling these days is, of course, Dan Marino--the new kid, the next Broadway Joe. Suddenly, at 23, he’s the best ever to play the position. Everyone says so. When people were talking to Montana about quarterbacks, invariably they would ask him if he didn’t think Marino was just the best gol-darn quarterback he’d ever seen.

This can get on your nerves, even Joe Montana’s. He is, all evidence to the contrary aside, human after all.

You just couldn’t tell it Sunday when Montana, running and passing, pitched a near perfect game in leading the San Francisco 49ers to a 38-16 rout of Dan Marino’s Miami Dolphins.

No quarterback has ever had a better Super Bowl than Montana, the game’s most valuable player. Not even Montana when he was the MVP three years in his other Super Bowl appearance.

“I’m sure it motivated him,” San Francisco wide receiver Dwight Clark said of the competition with Marino.

It motivated him, all right. Although he didn’t want to say so. It’s just that when you’re 28 and you’ve got better statistics than Loni Anderson, you don’t want to be asked about some other quarterback.

“Enough is enough,” Clark said. “All you heard about all week was how our defense was going to stop Marino. Marino against Montana. I think Joe Montana won that one.”

Montana won like Reagan, the old coin-flipper himself, won. He dominated. He stood tall. He was unbeatable. He threw with the usual accuracy. He scrambled like no other quarterback, rolling out of the pocket, leading the Dolphins on a not-so-merry chase.

He was great, but you couldn’t get him to say so. Yet, he must have been pleased that Joe Montana was the quarterback making memories at Stanford Stadium Sunday.

“As long as they remember that we won, that’s all that matters,” is what he said.

But it wasn’t all that mattered, and it wasn’t all he said. Montana would say that he thought the 49er offense, if not the quarterback himself, was being slighted in all the pre-game hype.

“We didn’t say anything about it,” Montana said. “But all week, all we heard was, ‘Miami, Miami, Miami.’ What about us? That motivated the entire offense. It wasn’t so much me against Dan. Our whole offense was overlooked the last two weeks.”

The entire offense was pretty good Sunday; it’s just that Montana was about perfect.

He completed 24-of-35 passes for 331 yards and threw for 3 touchdowns. He ran five times for 59 yards and scored one touchdown. He thought about spiking the ball after his scoring run, but didn’t. Montana was busy showing people, not showing them up.

There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. Coach Bill Walsh drew the plays on the blackboard, and Joe Montana drew them on the Stanford Stadium floor. The Miami defense was not much more than scenery in this passion play.

“Their defense fits our offense almost perfectly,” Montana said.

They cover the wide receivers man to man, leaving the middle open for the many 49er running backs to catch short Montana passes that were turned into big gains. When everyone was covered, Montana just took off and ran, for an average of 11.8 yards a scamper. He was sacked once.

Montana never did complete the long pass, although he tried twice. What was the point? He could have anything else he liked.

And if people were talking about Marino too much before the game, the Dolphins were making up for it afterward. They were one impressed--if not impressive--football team.

“Montana deserved to be the MVP,” defensive end Doug Betters said. “We were aware going in that he had the ability to come up with the big plays and we couldn’t put together two good defensive plays in a row. They made it on second-and-long and third-and-long and Montana’s responsible for a lot of that.”

Losing coach Don Shula on Montana: “He was outstanding in every way. . . . He just knew what to do with the football the entire day. He hurt us in every way, running and throwing the football.”

Linebacker Bob Brudzinski: “He’s just an awesome quarterback, the best quarterback I’ve gone against.”

You get the idea. This third-round draft pick out of Notre Dame had played pretty well. He is known to have games like this one when the games really count.

But in the previous two playoff games he had thrown five interceptions against only 10 in the entire regular season. There was some concern among the 49er faithful. That concern must have lasted about one San Francisco drive into the ballgame.

“Your confidence builds so much, you almost feel like you can execute anything,” Montana said. “It was all working. . . . Hey, we’ve got an offense, too. They had to stop us.”

That was as bold as Montana got. He doesn’t talk a big game, he just plays the big game.

“As much as I’m not outspoken,” he said, “I’m definitely confident.”

Could he have played better?

“Any time you have incompletions, you think you can play better,” he said.

Meanwhile, Marino was getting introduced to the real world, NFL style. He was being harassed by the 49er defense and his receivers were getting knocked around. Marino threw for 318 yards, but it took him 50 passes (29 completions) to get there.

“I still think he’s a great quarterback,” Montana said. “It’s unfortunate the game he had. I’m glad he had it today.”

Marino had the season of a lifetime. Montana’s wasn’t bad, however, and you sure couldn’t beat the ending.

“I’m prejudiced of course,” Clark said. “But I think he’s the best quarterback that’s ever been.”