Just imagine if social media was around when Joe Montana and Steve Young were duking it out under center for the 49ers.
The two Hall of Famers endured five awkward seasons together as teammates from 1988-1992 in San Francisco, while establishing the franchise’s culture of producing some of the game’s top quarterbacks.
So, what does Montana think of all the 49ers QB drama these days? The Niners legend joined 95.7 The Game’s “The Morning Roast” Thursday with Allen Stiles and Larry Krueger (filling in for Bonta Hill and Joe Shasky) and gave his two cents on the current state of the position.
Former 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo recently threw some logs onto the fire when he termed that San Francisco has been through a lot of “weird” QB situations lately, which seemed to touch a nerve with coach Kyle Shanahan. For Montana, that dynamic just comes with the territory.
“I don’t spend a lot of time down there, but I’m sure there were a lot of things going on internally that happened to kinda sour the Niners to Jimmy,” Montana said. “But, hey, they’re all weird. You can go back to when I was playing, it was a strange situation there for a while too, back-and-forth with Steve and I. It happens in every organization, in every era.”
There was intense attention heaped on to the quarterbacks this summer, as Brock Purdy returned from offseason elbow surgery, Sam Darnold was signed to a free-agent contract and Trey Lance was eventually traded to the Dallas Cowboys after falling to QB3 on the depth chart.
For Montana, Lance’s departure was more about fitting into Shanahan’s scheme than it was about the 23-year-old’s talent.
“I think it was a tough fit for him in that system,” Montana said. “With (Cowboys coach) Mike (McCarthy) down there in Dallas, I think he’s gonna run a system that’s going to fit him a little bit better. I kinda saw it coming when you saw (Lance) getting a lot of playing time in the last two games there, or more playing time. I think they were trying to get an opportunity to stay in San Francisco, but in the end, they needed someone who was a better fit.”
Shanahan has usually relied on more traditional pocket passers than dual-threat quarterbacks like Lance, who earned his high draft position after rushing for more than 1,000 yards during his sophomore season at North Dakota State.
“One of the reasons, is he came from a place where he spent a lot of time running the ball,” Montana said of Lance. “That’s not the type of system that he’s in. Purdy runs if he has to, but the game’s played from the pocket for the most part in that system. It’s hard to learn and understand that game – I won’t say he was running a full read option when he was in college – but when you spent a lot of time moving out of the pocket. That’s not the 49ers style right now.”
Now that Purdy is in a firm position to become the next franchise quarterback, Montana is eager to see what he can do, but fell short of making a direct comparison to himself.
“I never really try to compare one quarterback to another, because the styles are all different,” Montana said. “But the one thing you can look at are the things that you said – he processes quickly, ball comes out of his hand quickly, he makes good decisions and he throws accurately. You can’t have more quarterbacking. As you can see, that system fits him, because he plugged in pretty quickly there.”
Purdy led the Niners to eight straight games and the NFC Championship last season and Montana thinks expectations remain high for the squad, which features a star-studded roster on both sides of the ball.
“I think everybody expects to see ‘em back in the championship game and hopefully they can get to the Super Bowl and they can pull off another victory there,” Montana said. “They definitely have the caliber team to make that run.”
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