Odds were stacked high against Steve Young joining the ranks of
the NFL
’s all-time greats. As a kid, he grew up in that football hotbed
Connecticut, and his parents didn’t really want him to play
football. In college, he started out eighth on the depth chart at
BYU and was told by a Cougars coach to give up playing quarterback.
In the pros, he started out in a d
oomed league (the USFL), moved into the NFL with a truly awful
franchise (Tampa Bay), and then ended up in the least enviable
position of all with the San Francisco 49ers, believe it or
not.
Odds were stacked high against Steve Young joining the ranks of the NFL’s all-time greats.
As a kid, he grew up in that football hotbed Connecticut, and his parents didn’t really want him to play football.
In college, he started out eighth on the depth chart at BYU and was told by a Cougars coach to give up playing quarterback.
In the pros, he started out in a doomed league (the USFL), moved into the NFL with a truly awful franchise (Tampa Bay), and then ended up in the least enviable position of all with the San Francisco 49ers, believe it or not.
Young spent some of his best years on the bench behind one of the greatest, and winningest, quarterbacks of all time in Joe Montana before taking over a franchise in decline, complete with a skeptical fan base and an unattainable objective – winning the Super Bowl every year.
And, to top it all off, he was also one of the genuinely nicest, most balanced and non-athletically talented players in league history. He was the kind of guy who could have been voted most likely to realize how much better his time could be spent than playing a game, chuck it all and do something truly worthwhile.
Yet, there he was in Canton on Sunday, giving his acceptance speech during his induction into the NFL Hall of Fame.
Despite a truncated career due to his peculiar circumstances, Young still managed to become one of the NFL’s all-time great passers, leading the league in passing a record six times (tied with Slingin’ Sammy Baugh), set new standards in quarterback rating, and tossed a record six touchdown passes in his lone Super Bowl.
But Young will forever be known as the greatest running QB in NFL history. (Sure, Michael Vick may one day surpass him in some people’s minds, maybe even in the raw numbers. But Young did it in an era when QBs were expected to drop back in the pocket and stay there. Young’s exploits made Vick possible.) The numbers are astounding enough – more than 4,000 rushing yards and 43 rushing TDs – but it was on his reckless forays downfield that Young’s raging competitive nature really came out.
Who can forget the 49-yard TD run against Minnesota in the 1987 playoffs? Or, his refusal to go out of bounds despite losing his helmet in a preseason game against San Diego? In the preseason.
However, Young’s career wouldn’t have been complete without two crucial victories, both capping the 1994 season. First, Young and the 49ers dispatched his longtime nemesis – the Dallas Cowboys – 38-28 in the NFC Championship game, then blasted the Chargers in the Super Bowl behind an unprecedented aerial display by the southpaw. Young declared that he had finally dislodged the proverbial “monkey” off his back, and added that the triumph was “one” in what he surely believed was the first of several title shots.
It would be his only chance, and the 49ers’ last hurrah before a long, slow descent into destitution. With all due respect to the efforts of other 49ers, both positive – Steve Mariucci and Jeff Garcia – and negative – Carmen Policy, Dwight Clark and John York, it was Young alone who gave the 49ers real hope and his exodus that signaled the inevitable collapse.
That’s because Young’s immense talent and desire held off what should have been a much earlier 49ers decline. It was Young who was left to lead a resurgence with a relative paucity of talent after the transcendence of the 1980s. Not only were Montana and Bill Walsh gone by the time Young got his shot, but the 49ers were in the process of unloading key players like Ronnie Lott, Roger Craig, and a host of others. Young had the incomparable Jerry Rice, who wasn’t all that thrilled at first by the prospect of playing with the lefty, and George Siefert, and a patchwork team.
Meanwhile, the Dallas Cowboys were at the beginning of their rise to prominence, and their brilliance in the 1990s would overshadow Young and the 49ers.
Ironically, Young was at least partly responsible for the Cowboys’ rise. After one particularly frustrating loss to the Raiders, during which Young and the 49er offense struggled mightily, Niners’ defensive end Charles Haley screamed at Young with such sustained vehemence that, the story goes, Lott had to be summoned from the Raiders lockerroom to calm down the hysterical Haley. It wasn’t long before the talented but mercurial Haley was traded. (There was also an incident involving the deposit of accumulated liquid assets on a coach’s car that contributed to Haley’s exit.)
And, to what miserable franchise did the 49ers choose to exile the pass rusher par excellence? Perhaps a struggling team playing in zero degree temperatures most of the season? No, in an amazing display of arrogance and short-sightedness, the 49ers presented him to a young, talented team in need of, you guessed it, a veteran pass rusher who could teach the youngsters how to win. Young and the 49ers would pay in spades for a decade.
Years later, when a washed-up Haley returned to the 49ers for a swansong, Young was among the first to greet him. It was a gesture that truly defined Young as a human being.
For all his talent, for all his success, and for all the challenges that he had to overcome to succeed, Young remained the same outstanding person through it all. There will never be another like him.
Jim Johnson is the Morgan Hill Times Sports Editor. He can be reached by phone at (408) 779-4106 (ext. 203) or by email at [email protected]
