Head Games

There is a strong call now for San Francisco quarterback Steve Young to retire, the concussions piling up and everyone a medical expert.

A columnist for USA Today suggested as much Thursday in a story headlined: “There’s no question: It is time for Young to walk away.” Other sportswriters have intoned the same refrain. A well-used sports Internet site has polled the public, and more than 80% contend he should quit.

It is a fascinating turnaround, and a collective disregard for the mentality of the athlete, the same athlete admired, encouraged and extolled for being so tough and fearless.

Now the idea apparently is to talk sense to someone who has been knocked senseless, as if everything he has been doing all these years made any kind of sense.

And it’s probably not going to happen, says Gary Plummer, friend, former teammate and now 49er broadcaster.

“He’s been a tough [SOB] his entire career and I know exactly where Steve Young is coming from,” says Plummer, who underwent 17 surgeries during his 15-year career at linebacker. “If he goes out this way, it’s like he’s quitting.

“You have to know where Steve Young has come from. He’s been fighting for respect all his life. He has two brothers who still think they could have been better quarterbacks. He was like seventh on the BYU depth chart, and because of a whole bunch of injuries, he got his chance. He was lost in Tampa, and then there was Joe Montana in San Francisco.

“This is an athlete who is used to overcoming huge things, and this is just another obstacle in his mind to overcome.”

Friends and family have reportedly been urging Young to retire. Steve Mariucci, Young’s coach, drops his voice now each time he speaks about Young, as if already mourning the retirement of another great competitor. Bill Walsh, the 49ers’ president, has moved on, willing to embrace his find, Jeff Garcia, as the team’s next field commander.

But Plummer thinks the traits that made Young so great on the football field will prevent him from leaving before the end of the season.

“I can see him coming back after the [49ers’ bye, Oct. 31] and playing a different game, a guarded game,” he says. “That would give him six weeks of recovery, and give him time to see if there have been any changes made [along the offensive line], providing more protection for the quarterback.

“Knowing Steve, he will want to go out on his own terms. He saw John Elway last year, and while he’s probably not going to the Super Bowl, I think he will return to finish the season. He’s had a storybook life up to this point and I think, for him, he doesn’t want the final chapter to ruin the rest of the book.”

As a friend now, Plummer says, “I would not want him to play anymore. But if I was a teammate, I would want him to play. I know that’s a contradiction. That’s also at the heart of denial here, the sickness or whatever of being a football player.”

Steve Young is a football player, who gets banged around for a living. More than most football players in his position, he relishes the contact, running into it as much as he runs away.

“When you play football you feel invincible,” Plummer says. “That’s one of the highs, one of reasons you play the game. There are times when you feel like you could tear off that uniform and you’d find a big S on your chest. Steve and I have talked about it, if only we could bottle the experience, put it in pill form, we would be rich men. You become addicted to this drug of football.

“After the first game this year, Steve told me, ‘Watch me today. I’m going to be running over people. I was too timid against Jacksonville; I felt like I was on defense. I need to attack people.’ That’s his style, and why he has been so successful and why he’s so vulnerable.”

Based on experience, there is no athlete in the game today more adaptable to a situation than Steve Young, who has the innate intelligence to subtly change the course of conversation to suit the audience before him. But put a football in his hand, and he can be Dick Butkus, looking for a wall to run through.

“I went to [agent] Leigh Steinberg’s concussion seminar with Steve a few years back and I sat there with him listening to all this stuff and was skeptical,” Plummer says. “Listen, if I didn’t get two or three concussions a game I didn’t feel like I was playing a good game of football. Ask anyone who plays--they expect a snot-bubbler, hitting someone so hard it comes out your nose. After 90% of the games, my tear ducts would be so swollen I’d get this mucus coming out. It was the trauma from being hit in the head. I mean you’d feel queasy, and see some stars, but that was just part of the game.

“Concussions were like a badge of honor. If you didn’t get them, it was like you weren’t earning your money. That’s a bigger thing with defensive players, but in general for a football player, it’s all about playing through injuries. And that’s what you have to understand about Steve Young. As smart as he is, he’s a football player with an athlete’s mentality.”

Plummer, the broadcaster, puts together meticulous notes before each game now because he has found himself lost in memory in mid-sentence. And there are headaches now that he never suffered earlier in life, one more byproduct of being hit in the head while on the job.

“I planned to run marathons and compete in triathlons when I was done with football, but I cannot run anymore,” he says. “I played basketball every single day, lifted weights and did conditioning seven to eight hours a day, every day with no vacation for 15 years and I literally wore my body out. Was it worth it? No question. I prefer to see the glass half full, and I have had a great life, had so many great experiences and I know what it’s done for my family.

“But in my opinion now, it’s not worth it any longer for Steve. How many Super Bowl rings do you need? How many Pro Bowls? I think he’s truly worried for the first time in his life, and now that he’s engaged and truly in love--he has a future other than winning football games.”

It’s not the most recent concussion in Arizona that concerns Plummer or the one suffered by Young a week before that against New Orleans, but the next one that will certainly occur if Young returns to the field.

“The attitude of the pro player is, you can’t be hurt,” Plummer says. “It develops over time. You don’t start out that way. My son is playing Pop Warner football and it’s almost humorous, watching them crying on the field, going to the coach and showing him their scrapes. Half of the kids stop practice just to get some kind of treatment. What you begin to learn as you go on into high school is, you have to be a tough guy. It’s something coaches preach, and intensifies through college and into the pros, where you never want to give the opportunity to somebody to take your job.

“But I watch these games now down on the sideline, and I shake my head. I can’t believe I did this. That’s what people are not going to understand about Steve right now. He’s still in the middle of it, but I’m getting a different perspective being away from the game. I see these violent collisions now, and I think to myself I couldn’t do that week to week.

“But as a football player you are in a constant state of denial.”

It’s all a matter of training, reinforcement and adulation, and apparently hellish to retract.