Pro Football : There Have Been Big Plays, but 49er Plays Were Bigger

It took 23 years to get a Super Bowl game such as this--a game that forced a conspicuously clever quarterback, Joe Montana, and a once-in-a-lifetime receiver, Jerry Rice, to pull it out with two long drives in the fourth quarter.

When the Super Bowl winners of recent winters were making somewhat similar big plays, they were blowing the losers away. They were building routs.

This time, give thanks to the Cincinnati Bengals for keeping it close--so close that Montana and Rice had to rise to new heights of brilliance to win the most dramatic of the Super Bowls for the San Francisco 49ers here Sunday, 20-16.

In the last minute of the third quarter, the show-stopping 93-yard kickoff return by halfback Stanford Jennings--which powered Cincinnati ahead, 13-6--would have meant the beginning of the end for some teams.

It could have been the start of the usual Super Bowl rout.

You waited patiently for the 49ers to collapse as the others have collapsed in the Super Bowls of the 1980s.

Instead, in a breathtaking 85-yard assault on the Bengals, Montana rebounded instantly, going long to Rice, long to Roger Craig, and short to Rice, and in a wink it was 13-13.

Then after Cincinnati made a field goal to lead, 16-13, Montana went 92 yards in the last 3:20 to win.

There have been two such touchdown drives before. There have even been two in the same quarter. But never before on a day such as this. Never to win a Super Bowl.

And you can be pretty sure of this: Only a Bill Walsh-coached team could have done it.

Montana’s career, from Notre Dame to Joe Robbie Stadium, has been filled with comebacks like this. He is the greatest come-from-behind quarterback the game has known.

How does he do it? What has he got?

It’s very simple, really. In the crisis of a possible defeat, Montana consistently hangs tough in the pocket, and throws the ball straight.

Considering the national stage that he was on this time, and considering the quality of the opposition, this was probably as well as Montana has played, meaning that it was probably as well as any quarterback ever played.

On his game-winning 92-yard drive, he threw almost every pass in the book. He threw dump offs, he threw outs, he threw slants, he threw deep.

All in that last drive.

Whatever it took.

Montana benefited from the Bengals’ inability to mount an effective rush against him. The Bengals aren’t the league’s leading quarterback-rushing team.

As Montana rejoiced afterward, watching a replay of one of his touchdowns, “I’m still standing up.”

But, once more, he did what he had to do. He beat the rush he had to beat while throwing alternately to the league’s best halfback receiver, Craig, and best wide receiver, Rice, who, in the pressure of near defeat, flawlessly ran the patterns Walsh gave them.

Walsh. Coach of the decade, at least.

Almost surely, there has never been a receiver such as Jerry Rice.

Surely, he is the most creative receiver the game has known.

Receivers as a rule aren’t creators. Even the very good ones just run out and catch the ball.

Rice makes a project, if he has to, of every play.

He started his day in Miami with a one-handed catch--a reaching, left-handed, one-handed catch. That time, he never could get two hands on the ball, which didn’t matter. He only needed one.

Later, making a long, leaping catch, he extended his arms to get the ball in his hands--the biggest hands in the league. Most receivers try to take that type in their chest. But a Bengal cornerback was right there. He would have blocked the chest catch. The way Rice plucked the ball, his opponent couldn’t break it up.

The Rice touchdown was still a different creation. Most receivers would have been out of bounds at the 1-yard line on that play. Indeed, Rice did go out on the 1--just after reaching forward with one hand to sweep the ball over the coffin-corner marker, breaking the plane.

This was a game that Montana couldn’t have won without Rice.

And they couldn’t have won it without Walsh.

The key play of the evening for Cincinnati came late in the fourth quarter when, instead of passing the ball on third and long, the Bengals decided to move it closer with a short run by Jennings. This set up the 40-yard field goal that made it 16-13--the winning field goal, the Bengals hoped.

The lesson: If you’re going to run on third down, Montana will beat you.

But Montana’s decisive 92-yard drive followed on San Francisco’s next series.

This wasn’t, in fact, a game that the Bengals played well enough to win.

They were only in it in because Walsh’s team, for 3 quarters, also wasn’t playing poorly.

The 49ers scored only 3 points out of 2 long first half drives, stopping themselves with dropped passes, a wild third down pass by Montana, an ill-advised running play on third and 9 at the Bengal 10, and, worst of all, a blown field goal.

Improving little in the third quarter, the 49ers twice stopped themselves again with penalties and dropped passes, once after an interception at the Bengal 23.

The interception that Bengal cornerback Lewis Billups dropped later, on one of Montana’s touchdown drives, was perhaps no more than evening up for the drops that the 49ers had previously made in his corner.

“It was like a big title fight,” Walsh said. “There were some missed punches.”

There were also some solid hits, notably those by the strong safeties--the 49ers’ Ronnie Lott and the Bengals’ David Fulcher.

But this was a day when the Bengals’ defense was otherwise less than awesome, and when the Bengals’ offense also blew hot and cold, never scoring a touchdown.

Boomer Esiason again looked like a man with a sore arm.

All told, it wasn’t a well-played game--for 3 quarters.

But what a fourth quarter.