Living the NFL Dream : Super Matchup: What would happen if the team of the ‘70s faced the team of the ‘80s? Funny you asked . . .

EDITOR’S NOTE: What would happen if the best Pittsburgh Steeler team of the 1970s played the best San Francisco 49er team of the 1980s? XOR Corp. of Minneapolis, which produced the computerized NFL “Dream Season” televised last fall by ESPN, matched the 1978 Steelers and the current 49ers in a copyright computer-simulated game for The Associated Press.

The football rises, first a blur, then a bird above outstretched arms, ratcheting higher with every rotation, end over end over end. San Francisco’s Mike Cofer unwinds his leg to find that Pittsburgh’s Mean Joe Greene has landed at his feet and the answer to the question--who was better, Steelers or 49ers--is at long last up in the air.

“Personally, I always had a great deal of respect for the teams I played for and against that were on that level,” said Greene, a fearsome Hall of Fame selection who played his entire career (1969-82) with the Steelers and now coaches their defensive line, “and I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself by trying to make comparisons that are too exact.

“The team I played on is history, the 49ers are the team right now. They’ve still got history to make; ours is in the can. In that way, it reminds me of the comparisons people made between us and the great Packer teams. They were different eras, so you have to use different measures.

“But the first step, obviously, is whether you’ve won the games you have to just to be considered at that level. The next thing, and this you can measure over time, is to see how many guys ultimately end up in the Hall of Fame.

“I remember looking at the Packers and it seemed like half their offense was in there. So I started looking at our football team and saying, ‘Could we get someone better than the guy playing next to you?’ And during that time, the answer, position by position, was almost always no.”

“Still,” Greene concluded, “I’m only prepared to say how we stacked up against the times--not against time.”

Joe Greene’s tenure with Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain defense enveloped one of the most incredible runs in any sport at any time--four Super Bowl championships in only six seasons, twice (1975-76 and 1979-80) back-to-back.

For that reason alone, Keena Turner would be a less-than-enthusiastic participant in the Dream Game. But there is another, even more immediate reason why he is loathe to make the comparison.

“Standing here,” said Turner, scanning the roof of the cavernous Superdome through dark glasses, “we are still one achievement shy. And so to do that at this time would almost be disrespectful.

“But the first thing that jumps out at me about the Steelers was the talent. Think a minute about that team, how long most of those guys played together . . . and you can find a lot of people who could name almost the entire starting teams, offense and defense. That alone gives you some measure of how good a team it was.

“Unlike those Steelers, this team has turned over quite a bit since our first win,” said Turner, one of only five 49ers to play for the club’s initial Super Bowl championship (1982) and still present for a shot at a fourth. “I actually believe they had the best talent of their time, maybe of all time. I don’t think we can say that.”

Roy Gerela lofts the opening kickoff toward the right side of the field where John Taylor receives it at the 8-yard line, slants 12 yards to the middle to pick up a wall of blockers, then cuts sharply back to the right sideline and down a corridor of daylight.

There is little in John Taylor’s background to suggest that he would become one of the best receivers and kick returners in the NFL, and in that way, as a classic late bloomer, his story is typical of what made the San Francisco 49ers the team of the ‘80s.

With a keen eye for talent and deep pockets, the people who make up the organization have always been willing to spend the time and money to get one step beyond the league’s stated goal of parity. In Taylor’s case, it required both.

Skinny and the son of a mailman, Taylor walked away from football after high school because no scholarship offers were forthcoming and went to work loading boxes at a liquor warehouse. After his mother convinced him to go to college, he walked on at little Delaware State and soon won a free ride.

When he was drafted in 1987, though, Taylor’s skills were far from polished and he was hardly the game-breaker the 49ers had projected him to be. That was all right, too. San Francisco already had the best in the business at his position, a fellow named Jerry Rice.

Taylor’s second season, 1988, began with a 30-day suspension for substance abuse, and while he showed glimpses of brilliance as a punt returner, his skills as a wide receiver appeared only marginally improved after that.

But he capped the season by catching the winning touchdown in last year’s Super Bowl and for the rest of 1989 and on into this year, he began making good on the 49ers’ investment.

On this day, the quiet determination and the fluid stride are in full evidence as Taylor zooms 52 yards up the right sideline before being knocked out of bounds at the Pittsburgh 40.

Joe Montana lines up behind center and surveys the defense through clear blue eyes. The first play already has been selected by Coach George Seifert, in concert with offensive coordinator Mike Holmgren, from among almost two dozen appropriate to the situation. And even as Montana assesses the white Steeler jerseys in formation, he tries to predict the chances of its success.

Backing up, Montana sees that his primary target, Rice on a 15-yard sideline pattern up the right, has drawn double coverage and that Taylor, slanting across the middle, has been dumped unceremoniously by a still-bouncing Jack Lambert.

Slightly less than three seconds have elapsed and Montana can feel L.C. Greenwood pushing mightily a few steps to his left. He glides to his right, finds a third receiver, running back Roger Craig, waiting in the flat, and zips the ball there. Craig makes eight yards and Mel Blount exacts punishment for each one with a jarring tackle at the Steelers’ 32-yard line.

Typical of the 49ers, but more revealing of his own work ethic, Montana has spent countless hours in front of a video camera after practice, perfecting the fake handoff by placing it at the perspective of the defender he is seeking to freeze, and reviewing the film. Now, this investment, too, pays off, as he completes two of three short passes to three different receivers, mixing in a Craig run of four yards, to bring the ball to the 14.

Looking on now from the comfort of the television booth, Bill Walsh can only smile. He devised the system that brought the 49ers roaring into the ‘80s, and taking full advantage of owner Eddie DeBartolo’s limitless checkbook, thoughtfully stocked it with players perfectly matched to the time and task at hand.

Montana lasted until the third round of the 1979 draft because few besides Walsh were willing to take a flyer on a string bean who moved like Fred Astaire and probably couldn’t heave a football much farther. But Walsh knew the Notre Dame product could always find time and a throwing lane among the bigger pass rushers, and he was willing to let the course of things prove him right. It did. But the best testament to Walsh’s vision is not that the 49ers have perfected the system that he willed them. Rather, it is that they have not stopped tinkering.

And so, with center Jesse Sapolu pulling to lead the sweep--a new wrinkle to an old play--Craig picks his way 14 yards through a minefield for the game’s first score and Cofer adds the extra point.

San Francisco 7, Pittsburgh 0.

“Motivation,” he added, “never was a problem.”

With the exception of safety Ronnie Lott, the 49er defense was without a marquee name, ridiculed as a finesse unit that stumbled from one crisis to another just in time to put out the small fires on the field. And because the 49ers seemed able to score at will, the group came to be regarded as the one that killed time between the last Montana play and the next.

But only the unschooled regarded them that way for long.

“They’ve got the superstars on offense to overshadow them,” said Jim Everett, the promising young Los Angeles Ram quarterback whose coronation as the passer of the 1990s will, in all likelihood, have to wait for Montana’s retirement.

“But anyone underrating the 49ers defense would be, No. 1, stupid,” he said and paused before adding: “And I don’t have a No. 2 or 3.”

Terry Bradshaw came out of Louisiana Tech in 1970 as one of the most sought-after quarterbacks in many a year, but it was his missile-launching right arm, and not the head that directed it, that the scouts always praised.

He was not stupid, though by his own admission he was often too nervous or scared or both to master what his own coaches and opposing defenses frequently threw at him. Unlike Montana, he did most of his learning on the job, and his coach, Chuck Noll, while often as aloof as Walsh, was decidedly less patient. As a rookie, Bradshaw threw four times as many interceptions (24) as touchdowns (6).

“You had to test yourself constantly, you couldn’t ever relax,” Bradshaw said, “because every pat on your back you knew could just as quickly turn into a slap.”

In 1978, the NFL adopted two new rules to enhance the aerial game, allowing offensive linemen to use their hands on pass blocking and limiting defenders to a single block against a receiver within five yards of the line of scrimmage.

Those changes convinced Walsh that the path to success in the NFL would be made through the air, and that Montana was the man who would blaze it. And with nowhere to take the moribund San Francisco franchise but up, he embraced the concept.

Noll and the Steelers saw things much the same, and besides, they had little choice but to follow. The Steel Curtain and the marvelous Franco Harris, mainstays of a franchise that never lost more than five games a season from 1972 through 1979, were both showing the wear and tear of age.

In the Dream Game, the 49ers’ rotating zone in the secondary is giving Bradshaw considerable problems, so the Steelers play a conservative style of football early. But in the closing minute of the first quarter, following a punt to their own 30, the Steelers open it up.

Bradshaw to John Stallworth for 32. Harris up the middle for three, then around the left end for six more. Eight more on a quick-release to tight end Randy Grossman over the middle. Harris and Rocky Bleier pounding steadily away for four and five yards at a clip. Stallworth again for 10.

Now poised over center at the San Francisco 20-yard line, Bradshaw looks at Stallworth to his right and Lynn Swann to his left.

Like Bradshaw, Swann became a Steeler because of a propitious coin flip on draft day. Unlike Bradshaw, however, he was considered something of a gamble, certainly tall and graceful enough, but slow. Yet, the Steelers, worthy of their place in a shot-and-beer town, gambled by taking him with the 20th pick of the first round and set the tone for a run of luck on draft day that has never been equaled.

None of the picks quite fit the NFL mold, but collectively they secured Pittsburgh’s present and guaranteed its future: In the second round, they grabbed Lambert, a linebacker from one of the few programs (Kent State) that carried less weight than he did (195 pounds); in the fourth round, Stallworth from out-of-the-way Alabama A&M; in the fifth, Mike Webster, a center seemingly too small to play for big Wisconsin.

“Maybe,” Walsh said with the benefit of hindsight, “the best draft ever.”

And so, with Stallworth drawing Lott to the right, Webster battling 49er nose tackle Michael Carter to a standstill in the middle, and the certifiably loony Lambert raging up and down the sidelines, Bradshaw goes over the top to Swann for 20 yards and a touchdown. Only to have the dependable Gerela miss the extra point.

San Francisco 7, Pittsburgh 6.

The second and third quarters of the Dream Game, like the middle round of a fight between two skilled boxers, settles into a pattern of punching and counterpunching, with the kickers serving as the surrogates.

Montana is harried, but not sacked, though twice he is hurried and the price is a pair of interceptions. The first of two by Mel Blount is returned 25 yards early in the second quarter. But after the drive stalls deep in 49ers’ territory, the Steelers settle for a 26-yard Gerela field goal and their first lead of the game, 9-7.

Gerela is successful a second time, this one from 33 yards, then Cofer answers with one of his own from 31. Blount carries his second theft just five yards, but Bradshaw covers the remaining 32 in a single breath, Stallworth wresting the rainbow throw away from Eric Wright for 19-10 lead at halftime.

Pittsburgh consumes the lion’s share of the clock in the third quarter as well, but to little avail. The fours and fives that Harris and Bleier ground out at the start of the game are routinely being trimmed to twos and threes, and Bradshaw, the long ball taken away by the twice-burned San Francisco defense, is only moderately successful throwing underneath the zone.

The 49ers, meanwhile, move steadily if unspectacularly with two long drives in the period. On both, Montana runs off a string of completions, but each time the Steelers’ defense stiffens and Seifert’s patience is rewarded with field goals of 25 and 28 yards. The second, coming near the close of the quarter, draws San Francisco to 19-16.

“One of the first things we did after winning our third Super Bowl last year,” Keena Turner said, “was talk about winning a fourth, about repeating the way the Steelers did.

“But that goal, all by itself, isn’t going to give you enough reason to be successful. Reasons have to be deeper-rooted than that and they have to be individual. So we always tried to compete against ourselves. Not against Denver, not against Pittsburgh. Against ourselves.

“Montana is the perfect example of that. Joe competes only against Joe. If anyone has the right to float on air, he’s the guy who could do it,” Turner said. “And yet, here he is, down on the ground with the rest of us, pushing and shoving and kicking to get one more ring, one more play, one more break.”

Midway through the fourth quarter, it comes. Bradshaw, hoping to thread the needle and sew up the game, underthrows Swann. Turner steps in front of the pass at the San Francisco 22, and what follows is vintage Montana, made all the more remarkable by its familiarity.

Twelve plays, 78 yards. Seven attempts, six completions. It could be a high school game in Pennsylvania, a college game in South Bend, a playoff game on the frozen tundra of the North, a Super Bowl on a sweltering night in the South.

Even the punctuation is the same: Rice, 25-yard pass from Montana.

“You look at him from the sidelines and you’re almost in awe,” Seifert said. “You find yourself watching him like a fan would.”

San Francisco 23, Pittsburgh 19.

“I don’t know at what point we started feeling this way, but there came a point with our team that we knew we weren’t going to be stopped. It’s not like you can pinpoint a single play or even a single game, but at some point I think all of us knew, or started believing, that any one of us could step forward and be a leader,” Greene said.

“It wasn’t like they were nominated or anything. We just knew that whatever we needed, one of us had,” he said. “Sometimes, it got so tough that I didn’t want to pay the price individually. But I would never let down because of the team.”

Beginning at his own 20 with 4:53 remaining, Bradshaw circulates the nominations. Bleier catches his fifth pass of the day, an eight-yard screen, then Harris runs out of bounds after six more. Small fires are flaring all over the field, and Randy Grossman ignites the biggest of the drive by sliding into the vacant zone underneath Stallworth for 19 yards to the 49ers’ 13-yard line.

From there, with 1:12 left, Harris breaks the 100-yard barrier and the bank.

“The thing that I liked most about our teams,” Franco Harris recalled, “was that once we tasted success, we couldn’t be satisfied with anything else. Once wasn’t enough. Two, three, even four times wasn’t enough.”

But there is little celebration on the one sideline because of the man standing next to Seifert on the other.

Pittsburgh 26, San Francisco 23.

After a touchback, Montana brings the 49ers onto the field with an eerie calm.

“In the huddle,” said Cincinnati Bengal Coach Sam Wyche, who helped groom Montana while a 49er quarterback coach, “all the players can see are mouth and eyes. He gets respect with the inflection in his voice, in his eyes. Those are very primal moments, when the other players have the instinct of animals. A horse can tell in an instant if you’re afraid, if you’re a rider or not. Joe tells them he’s a rider.”

Now, even the markers respond. Five yards, eight, first down. Twelve, three, six, six, first down. Pass to Rice, pass to Taylor, pass to Tom Rathman, pass to Rice, Craig sweep for four and out of bounds. An incompletion, Montana’s first of the drive.

Third-down-and-4 at the Steeler 18. Fourteen seconds left. Montana back to throw.

“I lined up on the left, so my best rush was what we’d call a rip, trying to get underneath on the right side,” Greene said. “If I got pushed too far out, I’d try to club my way back inside. I wasn’t so much worried about my blocker as I was about getting pushed into a double team.”

“There’s only a few around, but the guys with power and speed are always a nightmare,” Harris Barton, the 49ers’ right offensive tackle, said. “If you stop the bull rush, they run around you. And the great ones can feel almost instantly where you are and what you’re doing and adjust.”

Greene does each in turn, notching Pittsburgh’s first and only sack of the game and folding Montana up like a card table at the 21. Cofer drifts onto the turf with eight seconds left. Greene lines up over center.

“Those few seconds before a final play,” Greene recalled, “were some of the most thrilling of my entire life. For all the gut-wrenching anxiety they caused, the final part of the hunt, the getting-after-it is what I remember most.

“The result,” he concluded quietly, “was sometimes like an afterthought.”

Finally, torturously, the bird is in the air, tumbling, tumbling, veering and tumbling, landing wide to the left.

Pittsburgh, Team of the Seventies, 26

San Francisco, Team of the Eighties, 23.