9101030872
DETROIT FREE PRESS
910121
Monday, January 21, 1991
METRO FINAL
1C
MITCH ALBOM
SUPER BOWL XXV; SEE ALSO METRO EDITION PAGE 1C
Copyright (c) 1991, Detroit Free Press
NO ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
MONTANA CAN ONLY WATCH FROM SIDELINES
AS AN ERA ENDS
SAN FRANCISCO -- On one sideline, the miracle man stood alone, watching,
his back stiff, his hand throbbing, his body racked with pain. For the first
time in most people's memory, Joe Montana could do nothing about the finish
of a championship game. Nothing but pray.
And on the other sideline, that is exactly what they were doing: praying.
A group of New York Giants dropped to its knees in a small circle, cornerback
Roger Brown and safety Greg Jackson and a half-dozen others. They didn't look,
they didn't want to look, they kept their eyes on the ground, mumbling "make
it . . . please Lord, let him make it." And out on the field, with four
seconds left in the best game of the playoffs, Matt Bahr lined up the field
goal that would determine which team boarded a plane for the Super Bowl and
which went home to watch "Lonesome Dove."
Pray. What else could you do? Already it had been a phenomenal game, a
real football game, ironically, in this time of global conflict, as much like
war as football gets. Hits had told the story. Painful, throbbing hits --
especially to the quarterbacks. A brutal slam on the knee of New York's Jeff
Hostetler that left him lying there like a sack of grain, and a pounding
blind-side slam that left Montana on all fours, trying to catch his breath,
unable to move.
"What hurts?" the trainers had asked him.
"Everything," Montana said.
All this happened, naturally, in the fourth quarter. Like any good
theater, this NFC championship rose in drama until, in the end, it was like
two buffalo trying to stampede through a single gate. They butted. They bit.
They pounded. And finally, between the Giants and 49ers, the two best teams in
the NFC, it came down to a 42-yard kick, watched by one aching legendary
quarterback, and ignored by a group of praying reserves, on their knees.
The kick went up. The kick was good. The prayer group leapt to its feet.
Giants win.
End of an era.
"This was a heavyweight championship fight," said an elated Leonard
Marshall, after New York upset San Francisco, 15-13 -- on five field goals --
to advance to the Super Bowl and squelch the 49ers' dreams of an historic
threepeat in the big game. Heavyweight? Marshall should talk. It was he who
delivered the blow to the back on Montana, a blow that bruised Montana's
sternum and broke a bone in his hand, a blow that kept the miracle man down
for a good five minutes, and left his eyes wet and his gaze unsteady. ("I'm
still having a tough time breathing," Montana said an hour after the game.)
That hit -- and another fourth-quarter slam by New York nose tackle
Erik Howard that popped the ball loose from Roger Craig -- those were the
crunching moments that changed football history.
As a result, there will be no threepeat in next Sunday's Super Bowl.
There will be no No. 16 at quarterback, no Jerry Rice down the sidelines, no
outrageous interviews with Bubba Paris. The red and gold are going home. The
Super Bowl is now an all-New York affair.
End of an era.
Hostetler gets starring role
"We've come so far, so many battles . . . the enormity of it is hard to
put into words right now." This was Steve Young talking, the backup to
Montana, the guy who almost got the lead in this NFL version of "A Star Is
Born." Had the 49ers won, he would have replaced the injured Montana in the
Super Bowl next week. So San Francisco could have tried to make history with
a twist -- an understudy playing the glamour position.
Instead, that role will go to Hostetler, a garbage-heap quarterback who
took over the Giants last month when Phil Simms went down and now, in New
York, they're saying "Phil who?" From the outset, Hostetler stepped on the
Candlestick grass and seemed to absorb the magic that Montana usually
possesses. Including the magic to heal. When he took that hit with 12 minutes
to play, a deadeye crunch to his left knee, courtesy of former teammate Jim
Burt, there was no way he was getting up. He was dead. You kept looking for
the stretcher.
But somehow, Hostetler hobbled off. By the next possession, he was back.
And running. On the final drive, he scrambled away from the 49ers' defense
and connected on a long pass to Mark Bavaro. Then he rolled right, ran away
again and connected with Stephen Baker. He was running? With that knee? The
clock was ticking and he was driving his troops downfield, scrambling,
steering the miracle, and suddenly, Jeff Hostetler, 29, was Joe Montana.
Jeff Hostetler?
"People keep telling me how I can't do it," he said after the game, "but
all I know is, I'm going to the Super Bowl."
And the 49ers aren't.
End of an era.
Running game is different
A moment here for that. Second-guessers will say that this 49ers team was
not as strong as teams past, that it was squeaking by for the last month or
so. But that's a lot of talk. Hey. They did go 14-2 during the regular season,
remember? The only significant difference between this team and the ones
before was its sudden inability to run the football. And this hurt. Usually a
pounding, hard-rushing team, the 49ers of late have gone airborne to make up
for their ground deficiencies. And Sunday, when they most needed running
backs to save the day, they failed.
It was Roger Craig's fumble that finally sunk the 49ers, sent them home to
the world of mortality -- a shame, really, because Craig has done so much for
this team over the years. But he had not been a factor lately, and this play
bore it out: with 2:36 remaining, and possession all that mattered for the
49ers, Craig took the handoff from Young and headed into the pile of bodies.
Howard popped him, square on the ball. It squirted loose, Lawrence Taylor
recovered, and the Giants came back from the dead.
And now they go to Tampa.
New York against Buffalo, for all the marbles? It is not a matchup that
anyone predicted. But it has possibilities. After all, they played each other
on Dec. 15 (Buffalo won, 17-13) and, ironically, that was the game in which
Simms went down and Hostetler shook the dust and began his career over again.
Besides, did you see that fake punt the Giants ran late in the fourth quarter
Sunday -- which got them 30 yards, led to a field goal, and ultimately, the
chance to win it? Any team with guts like that can't be counted out.
So we'll see. But this you cannot deny: a Super Bowl without the 49ers is
going to seem a little strange, maybe a little incomplete; and maybe that is
the highest credit you can pay to this team. We have truly gotten used to
them, Montana, Rice, Lott, Craig, Carter, Rathman. They have been champions
in the highest esteem, they earned everything they got. They could win just
about any game; they just couldn't win all of them.
"It was our obligation to prevent them from making history," said Howard,
grinning in the Giants' locker room, like a rebel who just overthrew the king.
"Let some other team set the record now, not the 49ers."
End of an era.
So it shall be.
COLUMN; FOOTBALL; PLAYOFF; GAME; RESULT; JOE MONTANA