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This Day In Sports…April 18, 1995, 30 years ago today:
Joe Montana, one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time, announces his retirement from the NFL. Montana’s 16-year Hall of Fame career included four Super Bowl championships with the San Francisco 49ers (tied for most by a QB at the time with Terry Bradshaw), and he earned MVP honors in three of them. Montana threw for 40,551 yards and 273 touchdowns in 14 seasons with the 49ers and two with the Kansas City Chiefs. Tom Brady might be the G.O.A.T., but let’s remember that Montana holds the career record for Super Bowl passer rating at 127.8.
The 1979 Cotton Bowl should have provided a clue, as Montana rallied Notre Dame from a 34-12 second-half deficit to a 35-34 triumph over Houston. The back story was even better, as the weather in Dallas that day was dreadful. Montana’s body temperature dropped to 96 degrees by halftime, and Fighting Irish trainers kept him in the locker room after the intermission, wrapping him in blankets and feeding him chicken soup to try to get the reading up. Montana returned to the field with a legendary performance.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t selected until the end of the third round in the NFL Draft that spring. Montana was taken after first-rounders Jack Thompson, Phil Simms and Steve Fuller. Skeptics nodded their heads as the 49ers went 6-10 in Montana’s first season (also coach Bill Walsh’s first year in San Francisco), as he threw only 23 passes while backing up Steve DeBerg. But the script flipped rapidly, and two years later, the Niners found themselves in Super Bowl XVI after Montana connected with Dwight Clark on “The Catch” in the NFC Championship Game against Dallas. The 49ers then beat Cincinnati 26-21 to win it all. The victory marked Montana’s first Super Bowl MVP award.
Montana and the 49ers had a lot of busy Januarys after that. They defeated Miami and Dan Marino in the Super Bowl in 1985, and they’d meet Cincinnati for the title again in 1989. Montana, who famously started the winning 92-yard drive by telling teammates in the huddle, “Look, isn’t that John Candy?” marched San Francisco to the winning score, a touchdown pass to John Taylor with 34 seconds left.
Montana triumphed again a year later in Super Bowl XXIV, a 55-10 win over Denver that remains the biggest rout in the game’s history. But a devastating sack in the 1990 NFC title game against the New York Giants knocked him out of the game, and he missed all of the 1991 campaign and all but the last game of the regular season in 1992 with an elbow injury. With Steve Young having taken the reins in his absence, Montana requested a trade, and he finished his career with two solid seasons for the Chiefs.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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