49ers Strut Past Cowboys : NFC: San Francisco bids to be best in conference--and league--with 21-14 victory over Dallas.

So that is what it looks like when you shed the weight of the pro football world.

Steve Young danced Sunday afternoon. The quiet quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers skipped and twirled and waved his fingers at the sky.

For 20 seconds that must have felt like two years, he waltzed around the battered reputation of the Dallas Cowboys.

His teammates had never seen it before--”I didn’t think Mormons were allowed to dance,” Harris Barton said.

But then, most of them had never seen anything like the 49ers’ 21-14 victory over the mighty Cowboys.

Before a record crowd of 69,014 at Candlestick Park, it was a triumph not only for the standings, but the soul.

After losing to the Cowboys three times in the previous two seasons--twice with a Super Bowl appearance at stake--the revamped 49ers finally got it right.

They got physical. They got nasty. They got inside not only the Cowboys’ end zone, but the Cowboys’ heads.

And they got it with flair.

There was Young, an artist with welts, dancing through the end zone after throwing a 13-yard touchdown pass to Brent Jones in the final three minutes to give the 49ers a 21-7 lead.

Young vs. Cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman? Young vs. the memory of Joe Montana?

Both contests were no contest.

“Today, Steve got the monkey off his back,” Barton said.

There was Merton Hanks, nearly four minutes earlier, strutting across the field after intercepting Aikman in the end zone.

Holding the football as if it were a hammer, Hanks swung it to the ground once for every time he remembered the Cowboys ruining his season.

Swung it three times, then left it spinning on the ground, as out of control as the NFL’s new order of power.

It is no longer the Cowboys, then everybody else.

It is now the Cowboys and 49ers, equals not only in record (8-2) but in stature. And nobody else.

They will probably meet again in the NFC championship game Jan. 15. The winner of that game will probably be the favorite in the Super Bowl two weeks later.

That is, if the winner can walk.

From the ninth play Sunday, when 49er tackle Steve Wallace stood after the whistle had blown and butted heads with Cowboy Charles Haley, this was a football game that resembled a heavyweight fight.

Not only was Emmitt Smith held to three yards per carry--78 yards total--but he was subject to constant taunting from linebackers Ken Norton Jr. and Gary Plummer.

And to think that Norton was a former teammate and friend.

“I’m not going to rub it in now--what happened during that game rubbed it in,” Norton said.

Not only did Aikman throw three interceptions and suffer through three sacks, but often he heard the howls and saw the pointing fingers of pass rushers Rickey Jackson and Dana Stubblefield.

“We wanted to see how the Cowboys could react to somebody actually playing smash-mouth football with them,” said 49er linebacker Gary Plummer.

The answer? Good early. Bad late.

At halftime, even though the game was tied at 7-all, the Cowboys had outgained the 49ers, 237-98. Young had exactly one passing yard.

The Cowboys could have been leading had Aikman not thrown one of his three interceptions and if clock mismanagement by Coach Barry Switzer didn’t force them to rush a last-second, 43-yard field goal that Chris Boniol missed.

“I looked up at the scoreboard and I thought it said I had zero passing yards,” said Young, who had been hounded by the quick Cowboy defense. “I thought, ‘How can we tie a game during a half when I have zero passing yards?’ ”

A more important question might be, how come the Cowboys couldn’t handle what happened next?

The constant pressure from the physical 49er defense finally wore down the Cowboys in the third quarter. In their first three possessions, they gained 28 yards.

That set up the 49ers’ go-ahead strike, a 40-yard heave from Young to receiver Jerry Rice on the first play of a series with 2:48 remaining in the third quarter.

Rice turned and caught the ball over defender Larry Brown, then shrugged him off and ran into the end zone to give the 49ers the lead.

“Steve Young has taken so much heat for our last three losses when it was really the fault of the defense,” Hanks said. “That’s why today was so big.”

Even though Young threw for only 183 yards--Aikman threw for 339--Young rushed for 60 yards on a variety of bootlegs that led to two 49er scores.

And Young did not throw an interception. One of Aikman’s interceptions was made at the three-yard line in the first half and another was made at the goal line with 5:03 to play.

Both of the crucial pickoffs were by Hanks, who said, “Troy throws a nice ball. He has a real nice touch.”

That final interception, which set up the drive that led to Young’s game-clinching pass to Jones, occurred after Aikman had thrown behind Jay Novacek.

Hanks simply stepped up and grabbed the ball almost off Novacek’s back shoulder. For once, Deion Sanders, who played despite suffering a dislocated middle finger after an interception in the second quarter, was not the defensive backfield star.

“If you are going to be a great team, this is how it happens sometimes,” Young said.

And the 49ers proved, for once, that they must be considered a . . .

“I would like to say they are a better team, but I’m not sure,” Switzer said afterward.

Once again, he wasn’t watching.