Joe Montana: Best Gets Even Better

SAN FRANCISCO —  There’s only one question left to ask about Joe Montana, as he goes on stringing these wondrous performances together. If the San Francisco 49ers continue along their current path to a fourth Super Bowl championship in nine years, will Montana have to be remembered as the greatest quarterback of all time?

Once again, on Monday night against the New York Giants, Montana was magnificent. He completed 27 of 33 passes for 292 yards in the 49ers’ stubborn 34-24 victory at Candlestick Park. With three touchdown passes in the first half, he staked San Francisco to a 24-7 lead.

His fumble just before halftime allowed the Giants to kick a field goal for 24-10; Phil Simms’s screen pass to rookie Dave Meggett for a 53-yard touchdown made it 24-17 early in the third quarter. And a fumble by wide receiver Mike Wilson led to Simms’s fourth-down touchdown lob to Odessa Turner, tying the game midway through the fourth period.

But then Montana led the 49ers on a 54-yard drive when they desperately needed to score. He even dragged his battered bones 17 yards on a scramble during that drive, helping get Mike Cofer close enough to kick the 45-yard field goal that provided a 27-24 lead. Then Eric Wright’s interception set up Tom Rathman’s clinching plunge.

Montana found it difficult to breathe because of bruised ribs and was blasted nearly unconscious by linebacker Gary Reasons’s helmet to the chin. Still, he completed 17 of 19 passes the first half and earned even more respect from the Giants (9-3), who now have to beat the Philadelphia Eagles (8-4) in the Meadowlands Sunday to hold on to first place in the NFC East.

“Joe Montana,” Giants Coach Bill Parcells pronounced, “is the offensive player of the decade.”

At 33 years old, three years after back surgery forced him to consider retirement, Montana is having perhaps his best season. Or as teammate Matt Millen put it, “He’s having a career year in a career that’s unbelievable.”

Including Monday night’s performance, Montana has thrown 22 touchdowns to four interceptions, the best ratio of his career. He has completed 71.6 percent of his passes, which would break Kenny Anderson’s NFL record of 70.6. Montana’s rating, in the complex pass-efficiency formula, is 117.8, which would shatter the league record of 110.4 set in 1960 by Cleveland’s Milt Plum.

Three weeks ago in a Monday night game against New Orleans, Montana completed 11 straight to start a game against the Saints. Against the Giants, he had another stretch of 11 straight completions.

His season highlights -- four touchdown passes in the fourth quarter to beat the Eagles, three touchdowns with no interceptions against the Saints (twice), Falcons and Giants -- would be three seasons’ worth of highlights for any of his peers, save Miami’s Dan Marino. In his worst game, Montana completed 25 of 39, with one touchdown and two interceptions, in a victory at Tampa Bay.

Receiver Dwight Clark, who played with Montana from 1979 until 1987, said after Monday night’s performance: “I thought I had been fortunate enough to play with Joe in his greatest years, but he’s surprising me now and I thought I had seen all his magic.

“I know we throw a lot of high-percentage passes, but 17 out of 19 isn’t bad, no matter what. This may be his greatest year.”

It comes as some surprise to outsiders that Montana keeps getting up because he feels he has something to prove. He has been reluctant to talk about it, but he was miffed that Bill Walsh benched him for a time last year in favor of Steve Young and that so many people doubted he could regain the form he exhibited before the 1986 midseason back operation.

Clark, one of his best friends, said: “I was very suspect of him coming back. I lived with him, and I know how he is; if I beat him in dominoes he’s upset for a week. But it was still hard to tell just how he was going to come back. That’s why last year was his greatest personal accomplishment. ... I know he doesn’t have to prove anything else, but don’t tell him that. When you get this close to being the greatest quarterback of all time, why not stick around and take a shot at it.”

The season began with people wondering whether Randall Cunningham was ready to kick Montana off the throne. But now Montana is mostly being compared to John Unitas and Terry Bradshaw. Just last Friday in Mount Laurel, N.J., Steve Sabol and his staff at NFL Films met to discuss what to do about the popular “Greatest Quarterbacks of All Time” video that is the last word on the subject for many who watch it.

At the end of that one-hour production, after all the evidence is examined, NFL Films decides that Unitas is the greatest quarterback of all time. But when the new edition comes out this spring, interviews with players and coaches -- active and retired -- may produce a different scenario.

“We’re redoing it,” Sabol said this week. “Montana has to be re-evaluated, his position in history. Bradshaw did win four Super Bowls in six years” to Montana’s three in eight. But the Steelers’ first two championships were testimony to their great defense more than Bradshaw’s brilliance. Montana is the pivotal person in all three of the 49ers’ championships.

“We did a poll with all the coaches, asking them what criteria by which to judge the great quarterbacks,” Sabol went on. “They said overwhelmingly, ‘Whether he wins.’ In redoing this, Montana is going to move up. Perhaps to the top.”