Joe Montana won four Super Bowls with the 49ers and helped turn the Chiefs into Super Bowl contenders at the end of his career. How Montana got from San Francisco to Kansas City is an intriguing sidelight to Super Bowl 54, which features the two franchises.
Montana's trade 27 years ago to the Chiefs was the climax to a quarterback drama that had gripped the San Francisco franchise for six years. The Niners won back-to-back championships in that time, but for most of it there was uncertainty around whether Montana or Steve Young would take the snaps.
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The uncertainty eased after Montana suffered an elbow injury that cost him the 1991 season and kept him sidelined for all but the final 30 minutes of the 1992 regular season. Young ran with his opportunity, and he was named the permanent starter by Niners coach George Seifert early in 1993.
The drama didn't end there, though. San Francisco still had to re-sign Young, who was looking for big money in his next contract. Montana, now a No. 2, was looking to become a free agent through the NFL (he had one year remaining on his deal).
Not long after, the drama entered the final act. Here is a brief timeline of the closing scenes, drawn from contemporaneous media reports by The Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times and The Washington Post:
February 1993: The Niners contemplate putting the franchise tag on Young in the early days of NFL free agency. Young reportedly is seeking $5 million a year.
March 1993: Young is given the franchise designation by the 49ers, and Seifert announces that Young will be the starter. The 49ers tell Montana he won't be able to compete for the job in training camp. Montana then tells the 49ers he wants out of San Francisco and files an appeal to NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue to void the final year of his contract. Tagliabue later denies the appeal.
April 1993: The 49ers shop Young to teams ahead of the upcoming draft (aka the Drew Bledsoe-Rick Mirer draft) in a bid to keep Montana. The Seahawks, who are expected to take Mirer second overall (Bledsoe would go first to the Patriots), are one of the trade targets. Nothing comes from the talks.
April 7, 1993: After signing third-stringer Steve Bono to a three-year, $5.15 million contract, San Francisco management gives Montana's agent, Peter Johnson, permission to negotiate contracts with other teams. The 49ers agree to work out a trade with the team Montana chooses.
April 8, 1993: Montana works out for the Chiefs, who had tried to trade for him five years earlier.
April 9, 1993: Montana works out for the Cardinals, who offer their first-round selection (20th overall) to the Niners. San Francisco accepts the offer, but Montana still needs to agree to a contract.
April 16, 1993: The Chiefs convince Montana to join them after a daylong meeting him with him and his wife. The sides come to terms on a three-year, $10 million contract. Montana turns down the Cardinals' offer of three years and $15 million. Trade negotiations between Kansas City and San Francisco begin, then stall.
April 17, 1993: Montana flies to Youngstown, Ohio, to tell 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr., that he wants to go to the Chiefs. DeBartolo stuns Montana by telling him he's now the "designated starter" over Young and would begin the camp competition as the No. 1 guy.
April 18, 1993: Seifert repeats DeBartolo's pledge to make Montana the starter.
April 19, 1993: Montana publicly turns down the opportunity to start, saying he wants to honor his commitment to the Chiefs.
April 20, 1993: The 49ers trade Montana, defensive back David Whitmore and San Francisco's third-round selection in the 1994 NFL Draft in exchange for Kansas City's first-round selection in the '93 draft. Montana is reunited with Chiefs offensive coordinator Paul Hackett, who was the 49ers' quarterbacks coach from 1983 to 1985.
April 22, 1993: With his time in San Francisco over, Montana says it would have been "absolutely nuts" for the 49ers to leapfrog him ahead of Young, who was the reigning NFL MVP.
Montana led the Chiefs to the AFC championship game in the 1993 season, losing to the Bills. Kansas City went back to the playoffs in 1994 but lost to the Dolphins in the wild-card round. Montana retired that offseason.
Young took the 49ers to Super Bowl 29, where he threw six touchdown passes in a rout of the Chargers. The 49ers made the playoffs each of the next four seasons with Young at the helm but failed to reach the Super Bowl. The team would not return to the title game until the 2012 season, when Colin Kaepernick was the starting QB.
Montana's Chiefs and Young's 49ers met in Week 2 of the 1994 season in Kansas City, with the Chiefs winning 24-17.
Footnotes from the '93 draft
The first-round selection the Niners got from the Chiefs turned into defensive lineman Dana Stubblefield after San Francisco used the pick to trade down twice in the first round to 26th overall. Stubblefield was a key contributor to that Super Bowl 29 victory, and he was in the playoffs each of his seven seasons with the 49ers over two separate stints. He played 11 years in the NFL overall, finishing with the Raiders in 2003.
San Francisco made another move in that draft that has an indirect tie-in to this year's Super Bowl. It sent its third-, fourth- and fifth-round picks to the Chargers for San Diego's second-round selection. The Chargers then dealt the third-rounder and a fourth-rounder it got from the Eagles to the Buccaneers to move up 18 spots in the third. The Bucs, picking 82nd overall, took a safety from Stanford: John Lynch, the Niners' current general manager.
