Since 1995, the Niners have not prevailed in the big game. Will they make that change this year?
Dana Carvey began filming his new HBO comedy special in September 1995 at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. After a mere two minutes of riffing on standing ovations and other meta standup commentary, he launched into a serious performance that began with a statement about a bygone era:
“Well, folks, all I have to say is, fuck the 49ers!”
Although making such a statement in 2024 may seem strange, the Niners were the defending champions and had won five of the previous 14 titles in 1995. They became the first franchise to win five Super Bowls eight months prior to this one when they defeated the Bears in Super Bowl XXIX. This was the beginning of a two-decade run in which they would only miss the playoffs twice, once during the nine-game 1982 strike season and the other in 1991 when they went 10-6 and soundly defeated my playoff-bound Bears 52-14 in the season finale, rightfully draining my postseason confidence.
The 49ers won 10 games or more in every season with 10 games or more from 1981 to 1998. They changed the rules of the modern NFL offense, sent more players to Canton on defense than on their more well-known side of the ball, went undefeated in the Super Bowl, and won five more NFC Championships. They also had back-to-back quarterbacks inducted into the Hall of Fame and the greatest wide receiver of all time. They had three of the eight biggest ass-whippings in Super Bowl history up to that point, with their 55-10 thrashing of the Broncos still standing as the best.
The Niners broke the records for the fastest Super Bowl score and the fastest two Super Bowl scores in Super Bowl XXIX. Jerry Rice and Ricky Watters tied the Super Bowl record for touchdowns in a game, Steve Young threw a Super Bowl-record six touchdowns, and Deion Sanders became the first player in Super Bowl history to play in both a World Series and a Super Bowl. Before the century was out, Dana Carvey and other Niners supporters had good reason to think the Bay would host one or two more championships.
Nearly a quarter of the way into the next century, the Bay remains barren.
Their QB prowess is one thing they have been able to regain. Quarterbacks come to mind when I think of the 49ers’ past. As the AAFC’s inaugural team, the Niners were founded in 1946, and rookie quarterback Frankie Albert was named second-team All-Pro behind future Hall of Famer Otto Graham. The two men guided their teams to victory in the 1949 AAFC Championship, the 49ers’ first-ever playoff game, and the Browns’ victory. Albert was the 49ers quarterback who started for more than three seasons without winning a league MVP award until 1951, when Jeff Garcia did so.
Albert was followed by Y.A. Tittle, the 1957 UPI MVP who led the Niners to their second postseason game—the 31-27 blowout loss to the Lions in the NFC Championship Game—and won the MVP award. Tittle gave birth to John Brodie, who assumed the starting position in 1960 and kept it for more than ten years, helping the Niners win their first playoff game and advance to the next round in 1970.
Eight straight seasons without a postseason appearance followed three consecutive ones, all the way up until 1981, when third-year player Joe Montana upset the Cowboys of the 1970s and began what Carvey’s audience correctly saw as the greatest Super Bowl dynasty ever. The 49ers of Montana, led by Bill Walsh, and later Steve Young drastically changed the NFL’s best passing game practices. This was largely because of the passer rating statistic, which the NFL codified in 1973.
A season passer rating above 100 at the start of the 1980s was equivalent to an NBA player scoring 70 points in a game prior to 2020—it was an anomaly, not a goal. It was first accomplished by Ken Stabler and Bert Jones in 1976, and it wasn’t repeated until Dan Marino and Joe Montana in 1984. After then, 49ers quarterbacks began to pop them back like Tic Tacs: Montana in 1987 and 1989, followed by Steve Young in 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1994 with a record of 112.8. Young was the only quarterback to finish in the top 100 in any of those four seasons and the first in league history to do so for two years in a row, let alone four.
As an assistant with the Bengals, Bill Walsh launched an offensive scheme to accommodate emergency starter Virgil Carter’s modest abilities, of which Montana and Young were the beneficiaries and facilitators. What became known as the West Coast offense was characterized by the late Chris Wesseling as “a horizontal, ball-control passing scheme intended to compensate for Carter’s physical shortcomings while also hiding an offensive line worthy of an expansion team.”
Walsh took his offense to San Francisco, where it flourished along with his coaching tree. After Walsh retired, George Seifert won two more championships and kept the offense rolling. Before taking over as head coach in Green Bay in 1992 and bringing second-year pro Brett Favre to the West Coast, Mike Holmgren is renowned for having climbed the branches as an assistant for the 49ers. Although Holmgren’s outstanding offensive coordinator Sherman Lewis was passed over for a job, his offensive assistants went on to become head coaches, bringing the West Coast offense to the 49ers (Steve Mariucci), Raiders (Jon Gruden), and Lions (Marty Mornhinweg).
His 49ers offensive coordinator successor assisted Holmgren in turning Green Bay into a powerhouse while assisting the Niners in regaining their position as the NFL’s top offense in terms of points and yards: The father of Kyle Shanahan is Mike Shanahan. It’s understandable why fans today look at Shanahan turning the former “Mr. Irrelevant” Brock Purdy into an MVP finalist and trace a line back to Walsh, especially on the same franchise, even though the younger Shanahan made it clear in 2019 that “I don’t run the (bleeping) West Coast offense.” While Purdy led the NFL in a number of impressive passing metrics this season, he also led the league in passer rating, another tried-and-true Walsh stat.
Kyle Shanahan, like Walsh and Holmgren, has a special touch with quarterbacks. He helped Jimmy Garoppolo start a Super Bowl, guided Matt Ryan to an MVP, and unlocked the now-laser-armed Purdy. Shanahan would therefore fit in well with the 49ers, who consistently appear to be ahead of the NFL in terms of quarterback trends. Heck, the Niners led the way in reshaping the position even in San Francisco’s lone other Super Bowl appearance, with second-year pro Colin Kaepernick leading a new wave of dual-threat quarterbacks across the league.
Andy Reid, a former assistant coach for the Holmgren Packers who departed the team in 1999 to take a head coaching position in the West Coast, completes the circle. The 1980s and 1990s are brought to light as Reid and Shanahan square off in the Super Bowl for the second time in five years.
And all that history does the contemporary Niners fan a great deal of good.
Give or take 1993, the thirty-year-old 49ers fan of today left a dynasty in the team’s final years of existence. They were promised a lifetime of championship parades, but all they got was an annual invitation to someone else’s Super Bowl party, which is what most of us get every year. This fictitious fan progeny of the Niners had the unfortunate experience of witnessing the first Niners team to miss consecutive postseasons since Montana’s rookie campaign, before they turned ten. They hit the playoffs twice, got destroyed by the future champion Bucs and then set off what is surely one of the most bizarre streaks in the history of sports: Starting in 2003, every 49ers season has either reached the NFC Championship Game or missed the playoffs altogether. They had terrible losses in 2011, 2012 and 2013, blew a Super Bowl in 2019, blew the NFC title game in 2021 and got deconstructed by the Eagles last year.
You’ll forgive them if they’re still recovering from the Super Bowl heartbreak that involved Kap and Jimmy G. Now that they’re here in Las Vegas. Please pardon them if they choose not to enjoy Montana and Young’s radiant light. You will be understanding if they say that the stories about Frankie Albert and Y.A. Tittle should wait a month or two, or if they say that a John Brodie article is not to their taste.
In 2024, Niners supporters are eager to make history that they can call their own.
49ers, fuck it?
Fuckin’ A.