Stitched-Up Qb Wears Well
In need of a fresh pair of socks, Steve Young’s roomie did what comes naturally to roomies - he rummaged through his roomie’s dresser drawers.
Harris Barton, the stellar offensive tackle of the San Francisco 49ers, found socks. He also found checks. A stack of them. Uncashed. Paychecks from the 49ers, made out to Steve Young.
By Barton’s stunned count, there were a baker’s dozen of them. They amounted to more than a million dollars.
Young was staying at Barton’s house. This was during the 1988 season. Young was the 49ers’ backup quarterback in those days. He was a servant in waiting behind a fellow name of Montana. And it occurred to Barton that Young hadn’t cashed those paychecks because he felt as if he hadn’t really earned them.
That was part of it. Young is like that, a man of principle and conscience. Another part was that Steve Young has always been more pickup truck than stretch limo, more denim than silk. One of those checks could carry him for a long time.
Young is earning his money now, though. And cashing his checks with a clear conscience.
For a long time, the feeling here had been that the toughest man in pro football was Emmitt Smith, the indestructible Dallas running back. Lately, though, the evidence has been mounting in favor of Young.
This season alone, Young has endured - and overcome - two concussions, a groin pull and, now, barbecued ribs. Even in boxing, a concussed athlete is barred from competing for a humane length of time. Groin pulls vary in severity, but they can hang on forever. Eric Lindros, who is bigger and younger than Young, was forced to miss more than a month with his.
Young has kept coming back this season, because the 49ers are simply not the 49ers without him.
And last Sunday, it was Young who broke up the scoreless tie in the Niners’ wild-card playoff game with the Philadelphia Eagles when he made a collision-splattered touchdown run of 9 yards. He took three hard shots during that trip, two of them delivered in a sandwich of excruciating pain at the goal line.
Young left the field bent to one side, with his left arm held tight and immobile against his body. Your first thoughts were separated shoulder or broken collarbone. Neither. Too bad for the Eagles.
Young went to the locker room. What they found were bruised ribs.
Such a deceptive phrase. “Bruised ribs” sounds so benign, so inconsequential. But if you’ve ever had them, you know better. You know how such a simple thing as the act of breathing becomes an agony.
Young never missed a snap against the Eagles. The Niners would have been surprised if he had. They have become accustomed to his toughness by now. The other players were told that their quarterback had gone in for “repairs” and would be back. They nodded. You can’t play in the NFL and not know firsthand about “repairs.”
All this week, the “repairs” on Young have continued. Those “repairs” consist of nerve-deadening daggers - shots of Novocain. Without the painkillers, even Steve Young wouldn’t be able to saddle up for today’s game in Green Bay. But he has submitted willingly, almost eagerly, to the needles. (You’d be surprised how many of those testosterone-swollen behemoths swoon at the sight of a needle.)
Without Young, the Niners would have almost no chance against the Packers. They may not anyway, but Young did not play in the game Oct. 14, when Green Bay overcame a 17-6 halftime deficit and beat the 49ers in overtime, 23-20.
In the 49ers-Eagles playoff game, the leading rusher was not Ricky Watters. Not Charlie Garner. No, the leading rusher was a 49ers halfback who is listed as a quarterback.
But Steve Young is not really a quarterback. Not in the purest sense. He just happens to take the snap. Really, he is a halfback. He is a throwback. In the old days, when the single wing was “the” formation and when “triple threat” was the phrase of the day, he would have flourished.
In many ways, Young is a throwback as a person, too. He is descended from Brigham Young, a religious leader who made a home in the wilderness, and he takes pride in his heritage and feels a sense of responsibility. Those who are around him on a daily basis find him sincere and without pretense or arrogance. He has neither the ego nor the shallowness that mark many of the modern athletes.
From afar, you always admired Young for the way he handled himself during the days he waited to succeed Joe Montana and then for how he persevered once he did. Following an icon is surely worse than the rest of us can imagine.
Today’s game will swing on the performances of Young and the Packers’ Brett Favre, the two best quarterbacks in the NFL at the moment. They are linked in several ways.
Ironically, while Young is dependent upon painkillers to enable him to play today, Favre knows about another sort of dependency. He became addicted to painkillers and spent 46 days in the last off-season in treatment. And then he played this season with purposeful vengeance.
The other irony involves Mike Holmgren, the Packers’ coach, who was Young’s position coach at Brigham Young University and then an assistant coach under Bill Walsh in San Francisco.
Walsh wanted to acquire Young from Tampa Bay, where he was taking weekly poundings behind an abysmal line, as insurance for Montana. But the price was high. Walsh wanted someone to tell him Young was worth it.
Holmgren did.
And now it’s too late to take it back.
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PLAYOFFS Today’s games 9:30 a.m.: 49ers at Packers, Fox 1 p.m.: Jaguars at Broncos, NBC