NFC NOTES : Montana Would Have Missed Super Bowl

Joe Montana, the San Francisco 49er quarterback who suffered a vicious blindside hit from Leonard Marshall in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s NFC championship game, suffered a bruised sternum and a fracture of the metacarpal bone below the little finger on his right hand.

More X-rays will be taken today and a final diagnosis will be made today or Tuesday. Team physicians said an operation is possible.

“I still don’t know what happened,” Montana said. “I don’t want to sound like a coach, but I have to look at the video. I don’t think it was the initial hit. I think it was the ground. I’m still having a tough time breathing deeply.

“Even if we had won, I wouldn’t have been able to play next week.”

The New York Giants know the Buffalo Bills, their draw in Super Bowl XXV, well enough to know that they can lose to them.

Back on Dec. 15, at Giants Stadium, the Bills won, 17-13, in a game most memorable because both team’s starting quarterbacks were hurt in it.

Buffalo’s Jim Kelly went out with a knee injury, but returned to action two weeks ago. The Giants’ Phil Simms was lost with a foot injury, and will not return to action this year.

“They were awesome today,” Giant Coach Bill Parcells said of the Bills’ 51-3 destruction of the Raiders Sunday. “But we know how good they are. We had them up there (at the Meadowlands), and they gave us all we could handle.”

Said Giant inside linebacker Pepper Johnson: “I guess they really played great today. We played them twice this year (once in the preseason), and we know the kind of play they can muster.

“We’re familiar with them, they’re familiar with us.”

Parcells said that since the two teams already know each other and played so recently, this year’s change from two weeks between the championship games and the Super Bowl to one week is no problem.

“We’ll be ready,” Parcells said. “It’s not a problem at all.”

The Giants said they had a sense of history. Preventing it, that is.

“We felt it was our obligation to prevent them from making history (by winning three consecutive Super Bowls),” nose tackle Erik Howard said. “Let some other team set the record.”

Mostly, what the Giants felt was a desire to show that they could beat the 49ers. They had lost to San Francisco in their previous four meetings, including the 7-3 defensive epic earlier this season.

“I really don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between these two teams,” Parcells said. “They beat us earlier in the year, and we beat them today.

“Any time you can accomplish what we did, on the road and against this organization, which we and everyone in the league hopes to emulate, you have to feel great.

“This game might not have been as wide open as the artists would like, but I’m sure Bear Bryant or Woody Hayes would’ve enjoyed it.’

Tackle Bubba Paris thinks those who would blame running back Roger Craig--whose fourth-quarter fumble set up New York’s game-winning drive--for the 49ers’ loss are “narrow-minded.”

“When you stop and think what he’s done for this team,” Paris said, “you can only have feelings of joy for his greatness. For a moment, you feel bad for him and there are those who will place the blame on him. But the game is a result of the conglomeration of events that transpired on the field, not any one of them.”

Craig was inclined to agree that the fumble was “just one play.” But it was, he also believed, one very key play.

“The momentum definitely shifted to their side then,” he said. “That gave them life.”

The loss ended the 49ers’ hopes of becoming the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls and five overall. The other two-time champs who came up short were Green Bay (1967-68), Miami (1973-74), Pittsburgh (1975-76) and the Steelers again (1979-80).

The 49ers left an imposing record for the NFL’s next dynasty to shoot at--seven consecutive postseason victories in which they outscored their opponents, 236-64.

It had to happen: Someone asked Parcells in his postgame press conference whether Jeff Hostetler or Simms would be his starting quarterback going into training camp next season.

“I think that guy needs psychiatric help,” Parcells said, grimacing at the question. “Hey, let the owners, let the coaches, let the players enjoy this, will you?”

Briefly: The 49ers last playoff loss was to Minnesota in 1987. . . . San Francisco managed only 39 yards rushing in 11 carries and had only one first down rushing. Ironically, that first down came one play before the fumble by Craig that set up the Giants’ winning field goal. . . . In two games against the 49ers this season, the Giants had six field goals, but no touchdowns. . . . The Giants are the first team to win a conference championship game without scoring a touchdown since the Rams beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 9-0, to earn a berth against the Steelers in the 1980 Super Bowl.

Times staff writer Tim Kawakami contributed to this story.