Passage To Canton

One year when former San Francisco quarterback Joe Montana was playing in the Super Bowl, the 49ers were on their eight-yard line in a game they were losing to the Cincinnati Bengals, 16-13, with only three minutes to play.

No other Super Bowl quarterback has been in that predicament that late and won.

Montana did.

With a series of mostly short passes called by Coach Bill Walsh, he led the 49ers 92 yards to the winning touchdown, which was scored by wide receiver John Taylor on a short pass from Montana with 34 seconds to play.

For such accomplishments, which in the Montana era often seemed routine, and for leading the 49ers to three other Super Bowl championships in nine years (1982-90), Montana is expected to be officially ushered into the Pro Football Hall of Fame today.

He has been an unofficial member because Hall of Fame rules stipulate that five years must elapse after a player’s last pro game before he can be reviewed by the selection committee.

Most of those on the 38-man committee are veteran newspaper football reporters, and all who could be reached this week predicted that Montana would be a unanimous choice.

A former teammate, 49er safety Ronnie Lott, is also expected to be elected, the selectors having considered 15 candidates, among them two former Los Angeles defensive ends, Ram Jack Youngblood and Raider Howie Long, and two other Los Angeles athletes who, like Lott, played for USC, wide receiver Lynn Swann of the Pittsburgh Steelers and tackle Ron Yary of the Minnesota Vikings.

Also nominated were wide receivers James Lofton and John Stallworth, tight end Dave Casper, tackle Mike Munchak, defensive players Harry Carson, Carl Eller and Dave Wilcox, coach Marv Levy and Steeler President Dan Rooney.

The Playoffs: Montana Season

To most of the visitors in Atlanta for Super Bowl XXXIV, Montana is better known and, on the whole, a better quarterback than either of Sunday’s starters, Kurt Warner of the St. Louis Rams or Steve McNair of the Tennessee Titans.

In fact, increasingly in recent years, Montana has been called the greatest quarterback of all time.

That’s understandable, for in Montana’s time, the NFL playoffs were Montana season.

He still holds postseason records--among them most touchdown passes, 45 in 23 games (to Terry Bradshaw’s 30 in 19), and most yards passing, 5,772 in 23 games (to John Elway’s 4,964 in 22).

Montana was a three-time Super Bowl MVP, the event’s only triple honoree in 33 years.

The 49ers have never lost a Super Bowl game. And only one other quarterback, Bradshaw, can match Montana’s collection of four Super Bowl trophies.

Football people note one difference between them: As quarterback of the 1970s Steelers, Bradshaw had more help.

The 1970s Steelers, who won their four Super Bowls in six years, are usually graded as the most talented football team of the 20th century. And one edition, the 1978 Steeler team, is often ranked as the best ever.

By contrast, the 1980s perception was that Montana was the 49ers.

Besides the 1989 Super Bowl comeback game, when he took his team 92 yards to beat the Bengals, 20-16, he led the 49ers home in the Super Bowls of ‘82, ’85 and ‘90, against Cincinnati, 26-21; the Miami Dolphins, 38-16, and the Denver Broncos, 55-10.

First Great Short Passer

Montana changed the role of the quarterback in NFL football, as well as the nature of quarterbacking.

Before Montana--since at least mid-century--those who played his position in the system known as the T-formation had been primarily strong-armed long passers.

On most plays, old-time quarterbacks simply handed off to running backs--but when they did pass, they fired.

Montana introduced the frequent short pass in a system that came to be known as the West Coast offense.

The system was the contribution of his Hall of Fame coach, Walsh, who in his first year with the 49ers, 1979, drafted Montana in the third round and schooled him carefully in these principles:

* Quick short passes to receivers darting horizontally just beyond the scrimmage line.

* First-down passes half the time, instead of 5% or 10% of the time, as in other systems.

* A constant run-pass threat with the same two backs on the field for every play--along with the same two wide receivers and same tight end--regardless of down and distance.

Ignoring shotgun plays and such other gimmicks as double tight ends and four-receiver formations, Walsh instructed Montana to focus on ball-control passes instead of the ball-control runs that were basic on other teams.

And in short order, Montana took to the West Coast offense as if he had been born for it.

The new offense had spread throughout the league by 1990.

Every Super Bowl winner since 1992 has been a passing team that, for as long as any championship game has been on the line, has made it a point to throw extensively on first down.

Previously, through the 1970s, the average Super Bowl game had been a dull contest matching ballcarriers such as MVP winners John Riggins, Franco Harris and Larry Csonka.

Csonka’s team, the Dolphins, won one Super Bowl after throwing seven passes.

Montana customarily threw seven passes--at least--in the first quarter.

Historically, therefore, Montana’s great accomplishment was transforming the NFL into a passing league.

Only those who are too young to remember him can be forgiven for thinking that football has always looked the way it does today.

Joe Montana, Best of All?

But was he the greatest of all time?

It is beginning to seem likely that Montana will be remembered as that.

In the free-agent 21st century, it’s doubtful that any team will be able to hold onto its finest players long enough to make any other quarterback a four-time Super Bowl champion.

Many a sports fan, however, is still familiar with some other pretty good quarterbacks.

They fall into two groups:

* The passers who, before Montana’s time, called their own plays.

* Those who, since then, have been charged with the execution of plays called by coaches.

The groups aren’t even remotely comparable.

Proper play selection is so vital in football that most pre-Montana quarterbacks described signal-calling as more important than passing.

It’s so vital that, eventually, every coach took the job away from his quarterback.

On the other hand, old-time quarterbacks didn’t have to deal with hordes of specialists on both sides of the ball--among them four or five wide receivers and two or more zone blitzers.

If the changes in the game make it impossible to compare quarterbacks, the leaders can nonetheless still be identified:

The best of the old-timers were Joe Namath of the New York Jets, Johnny Unitas of the old Baltimore Colts, Sammy Baugh of the Washington Redskins and Jim Plunkett of the Raiders.

Namath introduced the compact passing motion that has replaced the old roundhouse Unitas style.

Unitas, Namath and Baugh were the most accomplished play callers before Walsh.

Plunkett, a Stanford graduate and two-time Super Bowl champion who played into the 1980s, was the last of the NFL’s signal-calling quarterbacks--they had to remember every play in the game plan and call the right one at the right time.

The best of the modern-era quarterbacks, none of whom ever left a huddle to execute a play he called himself, have been Steve Young and Montana of the 49ers, John Elway of the Denver Broncos, and, somewhat longer ago, Otto Graham, who as Coach Paul Brown’s first passer in Cleveland was the first robot quarterback asked only to execute.

At their peak, the most effective of all were Namath or Unitas, and Young or Montana.

But No. 1 is really up to you.

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SUPER BOWL

TENNESSEE vs. ST. LOUIS; Sunday, 3:15 p.m., Ch. 7

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Inside

‘Air’ McNair

Scrambling quarterback Steve McNair is a dual threat for the Titans. Page 9

Spin of Day

Win or lose Sunday, Georgia Frontiere already has a Lombardi Trophy. Page 9

What to Do?

A winter storm has left some fans without a way to get to Atlanta for the game. Page 9

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Saving the Best for Last

Joe Montana in the Super Bowl:

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Year PA PC Yds TD Int Result 1982 22 14 157 1 0 * 49ers 26, Bengals 21 1985 35 24 331 3 0 * 49ers 38, Dolphins 16 1989 36 23 357 2 0 49ers 20, Bengals 16 1990 29 22 297 5 0 * 49ers 55, Broncos 10

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* Montana was most valuable player.