NFL PLAYOFFS / XXVIII Looks Just Like XXVII : Montana Has One of Those Daze

“I still don’t remember much,” Joe Montana said, knocked goofy and not going to Disneyland. “Soon as I landed, everything went white for a couple of seconds. And there was a sharp pain in my head.

“I couldn’t remember anything for most of the third quarter. I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t remember what the score was, or how they got 20 points.”

Dazed.

Montana was dazed. That was the word a team doctor used to describe the condition of the quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, who, with a mild concussion, missed most of the second half of Sunday’s AFC championship game. Montana’s mind was dazed and his eyes were glazed after a 30-13 defeat, symptoms he shared with millions of football fans dreading another Super Bowl appearance by the Buffalo Bills.

Fewer than 90 seconds into the third quarter, Montana was hit high, low and sideways by three Buffalo tacklers upon release of a 17-yard completed pass to Keith Cash. Pinballing into him--possibly a little late--were 270-pound nose tackle Jeff Wright, who came in shoulder high, followed by 275-pound left defensive end Phil Hansen, who took out the ankles, and finally 273-pound right defensive end Bruce Smith, who smothered the 205-pound quarterback on the way down.

Montana’s helmet struck the artificial turf.

“I think so,” he said later. “That’s what they told me.”

His season was over. Dave Krieg relieved the groggy Montana at quarterback. While he sat on the bench attempting to get the cuckoo back into his clock, Krieg, on Kansas City’s next possession, moved the team the length of the field. Although Buffalo already had 20 points, which was news to Montana, the game was tight again because Krieg had done what Montana had not--driven the Chiefs to a touchdown.

But Marcus Allen’s one-yard plunge was the only scoring of the half for the Chiefs’ offense, which snuggled in cloaks on the sideline waiting for Buffalo’s Thurman Thomas to get tired. Thomas’ three-yard touchdown run with 5 1/2 minutes remaining confirmed the Bills’ reservations for their return engagement to the Super Bowl--or, as a banner here described it, “The Road To Atlanta Goes Through Montana.”

Thomas outrushed Allen by 136 yards on a day dominated by running backs.

Asked how impressed he was with what he saw of Thomas’ rushing, Allen said: “I didn’t really get to see him much. But I heard the announcer quite often say, ‘First down,’ ‘First down,’ ‘First down,’ and so on and so on.”

Their careers once in jeopardy, Montana and Allen returned to active duty this season with style. Yet this was hardly the way they wanted to go out. Not with Montana completing only nine passes and suffering a lethal interception late in the first half. And not with Allen averaging 2.8 yards per carry and getting 24 of his 50 rushing yards on a single play.

Neither needed be accountable for a total Kansas City breakdown, however.

Montana swallowed the blame for nine dropped passes, faulting neither his receivers nor a football slippery from a steady mist. He said: “I had guys open. It was just my inability to get them the ball.”

Chief Coach Marty Schottenheimer asked officials to cover the football and keep it dry after numerous drops. He said it was slick, particularly during the first half.

Montana noticed the same thing.

“But then I kept going, ‘Damn, Jim (Kelly) isn’t having a problem with it,’ ” Montana said.

Cursed throughout the ‘90s by injury, Montana at least awoke a new passion, along with Allen, among football fans in Kansas City, where during the past week many of them clapped along to something called “The Schottenheimer Polka” and expected Montana to escort them to the big Super Bowl dance.

Didn’t work out that way. The season ended unhappily.

Said Allen: “We knew the road to the Super Bowl would be tough because that road goes through Buffalo.”

Some of the Chiefs persuaded themselves that they had lost not only to a better team, but to the best NFL team, in spite of Buffalo’s previous championship flops. Derrick Thomas, for one, dared to say that if the Bills play up to their capabilities, “I don’t see anybody beating them.”

This seemed a mouthful, but Schottenheimer spouted one, too.

“When they put their minds to it, they are a handful,” the losing coach said of the Bills. “And I don’t want to put any jinx on them, but if Buffalo goes to play next week anywhere near how they played today, then all those people who have been the doomsday people about this Buffalo team can just pack it away, because Buffalo is a hell of a football team.”

Sounded a little dazed himself there.