JOE MONTANA : Today, Survival Is the Game That NFL Quarterbacks Are Playing, and the 49ers’ Leader Has Certainly Survived Worst

One safe prediction can be made about the National Football League this year:

The quarterbacks will be hit hard and often, perhaps harder and more often than last year, when a record number of them were hurt.

Under the rules of the game, assaulting the passer is widely perceived to be the best way to play pass defense--maybe, some say, the only way.

Thus it isn’t surprising to find the San Francisco 49er quarterback wearing a small scar on his face just above the mouth.

Not long ago, Joe Montana was asked if there was a story behind that.

“There is,” he said. “I was bitten by a dog.”

Pause for laughter.

“I really was,” he said. “It was when I was about 8 years old. He was my aunt’s dog. He wanted to quit playing, and I didn’t.”

Montana never does.

And that’s the key to his athletic career, a career with these remarkable highlights:

--In the last six years, he has been voted most valuable player of two Super Bowls.

--After becoming the first NFL quarterback hurt last fall, going down in the regular-season opener, Montana underwent two hours of back surgery but missed only eight games, returning to lead San Francisco to the division championship.

“The greatest comeback I’ve seen in 50 years in football,” former NFL coach Sid Gillman said.

It was, nonetheless, a comeback that failed to impress the man who operated on Montana, Dr. Arthur White.

“He’s crazy (to be playing football),” said White, who in recent months, surprising himself, has become one of his patient’s best friends.

“We often see him socially now, for dinner and other things,” Montana said. “He still thinks I’m crazy.”

In an era of widening attacks on quarterbacks by defensive players, Montana’s explanation--then and now--for enduring a hurry-up program of painful, exhausting rehabilitation for his badly injured back is typical of his attitude toward living.

“I love to play football,” he said.

That leaves only two questions about 1987: Is his back stronger than it was last January, when, in the playoffs, he experienced a game-ending hit from New York Giant lineman Jim Burt? All things considered, how well can Montana play football at 31 in his ninth NFL season?

“Joe is at least as strong as he was earlier in his career,” his coach, Bill Walsh, said at the 49ers’ summer camp here at Sierra College.

“He may be a 10th of a second slower in the 40--time has taken some toll--but there’s no reason he can’t have another big year. Physically, he can do everything he ever has done.”

Montana agrees.

“I’m fresher and stronger now because I could devote the off-season to a weight program,” he said.

“The best thing I did last year was coming back--prematurely, a lot of people thought. I didn’t want to lose the year, and that’s what motivated me to work so hard (at recuperating).

“Suppose I’d been shooting to (return) this year. I’d have dragged out the back rehab through the whole off-season--and now I’d be way behind in my lifting and total-strength programs.”

Montana did say, however, that one thing is keeping him from reaching 100% in his physical conditioning. He has lost the feeling in some parts of his legs and feet.

“There is a stretch, six, eight inches above the knee, and another, six, eight inches below the knee, where I have no feeling,” he said. “Also, from the top of the Achilles’ tendon to the heel, I have no feeling.

“When the disk in my back ruptured last September, it pinched the sciatic nerve. The nerve ends in there are still in an uproar. Until they calm down, I won’t have much feeling in the (legs) for a year or two, possibly never.”

How does such a condition affect a quarterback?

“I trip once in a while when I shouldn’t,” Montana said. “It’s just a matter of getting used to a different sort of feeling.”

Joe Montana is the quickest quarterback in the league. He even thinks quick.

--DAN DEVINE, former coach

The sun is beating down on the Rocklin practice field in Placer County, an area east of Sacramento, as Montana drops quickly into the pocket and throws with characteristic dispatch.

The ball doesn’t go far, but it spins fast and straight, hitting a speeding receiver in the hands.

“Same old Montana,” a bystander remarks.

The crowds are large and knowledgeable at Rocklin, where Walsh opens all practices to the public, and Montana, of course, is a favorite.

At 6-2 and 192, he isn’t the league’s biggest quarterback, but he is one of the most engaging. Shy and friendly, he resembles any dark blond, blue-eyed surfer at Manhattan Beach, where, in fact, he used to live.

He used to live in Palos Verdes, too, but he’s selling that house. With his wife Jennifer and their two daughters, Joe is moving into a new place he’s building south of San Francisco at Redwood City.

On the football field, Montana probably is more effective as a scrambler than dropping back in a pocket, where he has spent much of his life lately.

“He’s just another quarterback in the pocket,” one Western scout said. “The thing that made him--the thing that separates Montana from other quarterbacks--is his fluid moves in and out of the pocket. He’s the most accurate passer on the dead run we’ve had in this league.”

To scramblers and dropback passers, football is two different games, with different reading problems.

Pocket passers are most effective when they have the ability to survey the entire field and find the open receiver.

A rolling quarterback, by contrast, is looking for one particular receiver, or at most a couple. That’s easier.

Over the years, most of Montana’s big plays have been made while scrambling out of the pocket, or sometimes while moving about in the pocket, where he slides around cleverly. In those circumstances, he has been one of the quickest passers ever, and probably the most intuitive.

To back up Montana this season, Walsh has brought in another athlete from the same mold, Steve Young, who, as a running quarterback, advances the ball even more productively than Montana--or probably any other quarterback--though he has yet to demonstrate NFL passing accuracy.

Young will play only if Montana is hurt. For Walsh concedes that Montana on the move is the 49ers’ meal ticket.

“Our offense is strongest when Joe is scrambling and making impromptu plays on his own,” the coach said.

Curiously, the 49ers don’t use many designed scrambles or planned rollouts for their famous rolling quarterback.

“We want to line up almost every time with a pocket,” Walsh said. “What we try to do is design plays that Joe can take advantage of when he (scrambles). We’d like to have someone out there to block for him. We’d like to have someone out there for him to throw to.”

For most of the 1980s, that has been the 49er offense--twice an NFL championship offense. Whether it works as well as ever in 1987 depends, no doubt, on whether Montana moves around as well--and as often--as ever.

Pass rushing is a seek-and-destroy operation for defensive linemen today.

--ROBERT KERLAN, Ram physician.

About 15 years ago, when Montana was playing football at Ringgold High School in Monongahela, Pa., his mother went to every game, including road games, with one exception.

That time, her boy came home with a hole in the forehead of his helmet.

“I was so frightened, I said, ‘Never again,’ ” Theresa Montana recalled. “ ‘I’ll never miss another game.’ ”

Caring mothers. Was there ever a time when they could do something to protect their football-playing children from some of the perils? If there was, it is long gone.

The only protection an NFL quarterback gets is from his teammates, and often that’s not enough. It’s open season now all season on NFL passers. The object of the game for defensive players is simply to get the quarterback.

They got both Montana and Jim McMahon last year, among others. And of the many quarterbacks compelled to sit down in 1986, Montana had the honor of being the first and last, leaving on both opening day and getaway day.

The second time, on national television, he suffered a severe headache and other pains as the New York Giants ripped him and, incidentally, his team, 49-3, in a Meadowlands playoff.

The pass rush, to be sure, has been part of football since 1910, when it was invented. The difference today is the stepped-up, all-out rush--by defensive backs and linebackers as well as linemen.

“It’s the biggest change in football in my time,” Montana said.

Why is the rush so vicious these days?

“There’s nothing else for defensive backs to do,” Montana said.

“The way the rules are now, they’re not allowed to bump anybody, except right on the line of scrimmage. And there’s no way they can stay with any fast little receiver.

“They take it out on the quarterback. The defensive backs go after him instead of the receivers.”

Football has, in fact, evolved into a receivers’ game, in Montana’s view.

“Everything favors (them) today,” he said. “The coaches think you score faster throwing to a wide receiver than handing off to a back. And television thinks that nothing beats an exciting catch.

“Television wants more excitement. The NFL changes the rules to satisfy television. Then the quarterback pays for it.”

As a matter of strategy and philosophy, Montana said, most modern NFL defensive teams alternate maximum blitzes with maximum zone coverages.

“The defensive team goes from one extreme to the other all afternoon,” he said. “They either bring (rush) everybody or drop everybody.

“If they bring the whole team, they’re figuring we can’t block them all.

“If they drop eight guys (into zone coverage), there’s no place for me to throw.”

Blitzing hurts the body. Zoning hurts the psyche. When Montana breaks the huddle and leads the 49ers to the line of scrimmage, is he hoping for a blitz or a zone?

“I’d rather see them bring everybody,” he said. “Those zones are a pain in the neck.”

To cope with the weight of the rush on a modern quarterback, the 49ers asked Montana to add 10 pounds to his legs and shoulders this year. The best he could do was two, but he thinks he’s more robust now.

“Doing 450 sit-ups a day helps more than your back,” he said.

His teammates, pining for another Super Bowl, keep cheering him on in the weight room and other 49er torture chambers.

Though Montana has never been classed with the best of football’s pure passers, college or pro, he has always held the respect and affection of his teammates.

At Notre Dame, they’ll never forget his first appearance in the stadium that Rockne built. A third-string quarterback as recently as 1977, the young man from Monongahela was finally summoned in the second half of a game that seemed lost to Purdue.

Out on the playing field, catching sight of Montana as he ran in from the bench, the offensive team turned toward him, and raised a cheer.

The applause wasn’t premature. He pulled out the victory.