The Full Biography
Joe Montana. Quarterback. Four Super Bowl rings, three Super Bowl Most Valuable Player awards, and a third-round draft card the league still has to explain.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man in red and gold who does not look hurried. Candlestick Park. A ball hung in the January air. Dwight Clark rising at the back of the end zone. They called him Joe Cool, as if calm were a costume. What the still cannot show is a steel-valley childhood, a flu game in Dallas that Notre Dame still treats as scripture, an elbow that nearly ended the job, two winters in Kansas City, and a living man who talks about the read first and the statue almost never.
Joseph Clifford Montana Jr. was born on June 11, 1956, in New Eagle, Pennsylvania, and raised across the river in Monongahela, in the Mon Valley, where the mills set the clock and a backyard was a field if someone brought a ball. His father, Joseph Sr., worked in finance and spent evenings teaching the boy to throw. His mother, Theresa, kept the house. The first pressure was not fame. It was to be accurate when a parent was watching, and then accurate when a high-school Friday was the whole town’s weather. He played at Ringgold High. The colleges that wanted a taller, thicker quarterback did not crowd the porch. Notre Dame did.
South Bend was not a coronation. Ara Parseghian recruited him; Dan Devine inherited him. Montana spent stretches on the bench and stretches coming off it, which is how a reputation for comebacks is built when nobody intends to build one. In 1977 he quarterbacked a national championship team. The civic object for the school, though, is the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on January 1, 1979, against the University of Houston. He had the flu. He took chicken soup at the half. Notre Dame trailed 34–12 in the fourth quarter and won 35–34 on a last-second throw to Kris Haines. They still call it the Chicken Soup Game. The name is a joke. The drive was not.
The San Francisco 49ers took him in the third round of the 1979 draft, eighty-second overall. That sentence is still a punch line in every argument about scouting. Bill Walsh was the coach. The offense would be called the West Coast, a timing attack of short throws, motion, and reads that asked a quarterback to think faster than the rush. Steve DeBerg started. Montana learned the system as if it were a language and not a playbook. By 1980 the job was his. By January 1982 the franchise had a birth certificate.
The date was January 10, 1982. NFC Championship. Dallas Cowboys at Candlestick Park. San Francisco trailed in the last minute. Montana rolled right, looking first for Freddie Solomon, then lofted the ball to the back line, where Clark rose and caught it with his hands above the world. Six yards. 28–27. They called it The Catch. On January 24, in the Pontiac Silverdome, the 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals 26–21 in Super Bowl XVI. Montana was named Super Bowl Most Valuable Player. A third-rounder from New Eagle had become the man a new kind of football was written around.
The 1980s in San Francisco were not a streak of luck. They were a shop. Walsh on the sideline. Montana in the huddle. Jerry Rice arriving in 1985 and making the timing look inevitable. Super Bowl XIX, January 20, 1985, at Stanford Stadium: the 49ers beat Dan Marino’s Miami Dolphins 38–16. Montana was Super Bowl MVP again. He completed passes the way a clerk files papers — in order, without drama, until the pile is a dynasty.
Super Bowl XXIII, January 22, 1989, Joe Robbie Stadium, Miami, is the drive people teach. Cincinnati led 16–13. Three minutes and ten seconds remained. Ninety-two yards to go. In the huddle he pointed out the comedian John Candy in the stands, a small human remark in a room that had stopped being human. Then he took them the length of the field and, with thirty-four seconds left, threw ten yards to John Taylor. 20–16. Jerry Rice, not Montana, was named Super Bowl MVP that night. The distinction matters. Four rings is the count. Three Super Bowl MVPs is the other count. The two are not the same trophy.
Super Bowl XXIV, January 28, 1990, in New Orleans, was a rout: 55–10 over the Denver Broncos. Montana was Super Bowl MVP for the third time. He was also the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1989 and again in 1990. Across four Super Bowls he threw eleven touchdowns and no interceptions. The cool was not a personality. It was a decision repeated under noise.
That is the public monument. The years between the rings are the shop the banquet speech skips. The 1981 season gave San Francisco its first Super Bowl. The 1984 club went 15–1 and beat Miami in Super Bowl XIX. The 1987 strike year still produced a division title. The 1988 club finished the Cincinnati drive in Miami. The 1989 club wrecked Denver. In January 1991, at Candlestick, the New York Giants ended the run in the NFC Championship: a last-second field goal, a fumble by Roger Craig, a season that had already given Montana a second league MVP. He had been the Comeback Kid since South Bend. The nickname is a sportswriter’s toy. The file is a man who kept taking the next snap when the building wanted a new ending.
The turn is easier to miss because it looks like an injury report. In 1991 a damaged elbow took nearly two seasons from him. Steve Young, who had waited in the same building, took the job and kept it. San Francisco did what winning clubs do: it chose the future. He came back in 1992 for a half of football and then sat. In April 1993 the 49ers traded him to the Kansas City Chiefs. A lot of great quarterbacks become a banquet in the colors that made them. He became a Chief for two winters and still almost reached another Super Bowl.
Arrowhead in 1993 was not a farewell tour. Marty Schottenheimer had a good roster — Marcus Allen, Derrick Thomas, Neil Smith, Willie Davis — and a quarterback who still saw the first open man. The club went 11–5. In the wild-card game he beat the Pittsburgh Steelers on a fourth-down throw that sent the night into overtime. In the divisional round he beat Warren Moon’s Houston Oilers. In January 1994, at Rich Stadium in Orchard Park, Buffalo won the AFC Championship 30–13. A concussion in the third quarter sat him down. Dave Krieg finished. The Chiefs had not reached that Sunday in a generation. He had taken them there in a different color. The 1994 season was the last one: a 9–7 club, a wild-card loss to Miami, and then the decision. On April 18, 1995, he retired. Sixteen NFL seasons. Forty thousand-plus passing yards. The league had already begun using him as a measuring stick. Retirement only made the stick official.
The numbers the banquet recites are a climate. The shop underneath them is a third-rounder who learned Walsh’s timing as a language: short throws, motion, a read that had to be faster than the rush. Jerry Rice arrived in 1985 and made the language look inevitable. Roger Craig, John Taylor, Dwight Clark, Freddie Solomon — the names in the huddle are the reason The Catch and the Miami drive are not magic tricks. He threw for more than three thousand yards in a season five times. He took the league MVP in 1989 and 1990. Across four Super Bowls he threw eleven touchdowns and no interceptions, one hundred twenty-two attempts. The cool was not a personality. It was a decision repeated under noise, in New Eagle first, then South Bend, then Candlestick, then Arrowhead. A lot of quarterbacks have an arm. He had a first open man and the patience to wait one beat for him.
Six things most people never knew
- New Eagle and Monongahela are the first rooms, not California. The cool sits on a steel-valley backyard and a Ringgold High Friday, not on a postcard of the Bay.
- Third round, eighty-second overall, 1979, is the draft fact San Francisco prefers to treat as destiny. Walsh saw a decision. Other teams saw a man they could skip.
- The Chicken Soup Game was New Year’s Day 1979 in Dallas. Flu, a deficit of twenty-two points, a throw to Kris Haines. Notre Dame still uses it as weather.
- Four Super Bowl rings. Three Super Bowl MVPs. The 1989 game against Cincinnati belongs to the drive and to Jerry Rice’s trophy. Arithmetic is part of the respect.
- He never threw an interception in a Super Bowl. One hundred twenty-two attempts. Eleven touchdowns. Zero picks. The still of The Catch is one play. The Super Bowl ledger is the occupation.
- Kansas City is in the file. The elbow, the trade, an AFC Championship in January 1994. He did not stop as a red-and-gold postcard.
A first marriage ended. In February 1985 he married Jennifer Wallace, who had been a 49ers cheerleader and then the person the rest of the life is built around. They have four children: Alexandra, Elizabeth, Nathaniel, and Nicholas. Friends from the Walsh years describe a professional who was first into the meeting and last out of the film. The man on the ranch kept the same hours without a huddle. He has said, of the famous throws, that he was looking for the first open man. That is not poetry. It is the job as he understood it.
The later years
Canton, Ohio, took him in 2000, his first year of eligibility. Eddie DeBartolo Jr. presented him. The gold jacket is a civic object now, like The Catch, and like the Cotton Bowl. San Francisco retired number 16 on December 15, 1997, a Monday-night ceremony that treated a third-rounder as if the club had always known. Notre Dame had already put him in its ring of honor. The college football hall took him too. He did not become a man who lived inside highlight reels. He became a man who still talked about the read.
In the late 1990s he and Jennifer built an Italianate house on hundreds of acres in Knights Valley, on the Sonoma side of the wine country, and kept a ranch near Calistoga. With the Beringer winemaker Ed Sbragia he made a Cabernet, Montagia, first released in 1999, sold in part for charity auctions. The vintner years are not a hobby paragraph tacked on to please a lifestyle page. They are what a precise man does when the pocket is gone and the read still wants work. The estate has been sold and sold again, as ranches are. The label outlasted some of the acreage. He put time into youth football and into rooms that raise money without requiring him to replay January 1982 on cue.
Television hired the voice. He has worked as a commentator, including stretches with NBC, and has remained the person a broadcast brings in when a two-minute drill needs a witness who was actually there. He has appeared at Super Bowl weeks as a measuring stick, not as a host who needs the camera. The children — Alexandra, Elizabeth, Nathaniel, Nicholas — are grown. Nathaniel went into quarterbacking of his own and learned what a famous last name costs on a Friday night. Jennifer has been the household since 1985. Friends from the Walsh years still describe the first man into the meeting. The man on the ranch kept the same hours without a huddle.
He is in his late sixties as this is written. The name is still a climate in San Francisco and a polite argument in every bar that keeps a Mount Rushmore of quarterbacks. Kansas City remembers the two winters. Monongahela remembers the backyard. He has not asked the country to retire the clip of Clark in the air. He has asked, by talking about the first open man, to be filed as a worker. The spotlight did not leave. It widened until a living quarterback could stand at the edge of it and talk about wine, children, and a route that still looks open if you wait a beat.
After the spotlight moved
It moved to Young, then to the next genius in a new offense, and then it came back every January when a team needed a drive and a network needed a comparison. Walsh still arrives in the same sentence. The sentence is the right shop. Third round is the correction. Kansas City is the chapter the banquet speech skips. The read is the file.
He came out of New Eagle, won in the cold in Dallas, went eighty-second, took a Catch, stacked four rings and three Super Bowl MVPs, threw in Arrowhead when the Bay was finished with him, and left the ledger on a simple claim: find the open man. If you only remember The Catch, you have the still. If you remember Ringgold, the soup, the elbow, and the clerk in Kansas City, you have him.
Portrait: Phil Hull · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons