Sport: A San Francisco Tour De Force

After saying "We caught Joe Montana on a big day," Miami Coach Don Shula could have stopped, except his usual forthrightness required him to add, "The way the 49ers played, it's hard to figure how we could have beat them." With last week's 38-16 defeat, he has matched the four Super Bowl losses of Minnesota Coach Bud Grant, whose quarterback for three of them was Fran Tarkenton. In a handy way, Tarkenton personifies the stakes of the game.

No National Football League quarterback has thrown more passes, completed more, for more yards or touchdowns. Still Tarkenton is regarded vaguely as a loser and alibier. Had the Vikings made good on even one of their chances, would he have been left at the door last week when Roger Staubach and Joe Namath (the league's 61st-ranked passer) stepped into the Hall of Fame? To the victors go the spoils.

In the San Francisco dressing room before the gala at Stanford, 49ers Coach Bill Walsh knew at a glance that the problem for his players would not be overconfidence. They looked overwhelmed. "The stress of that moment is unbelievable," he says. "You can go into a stupor under such pressure." Like Shula a pup out of Paul Brown, Walsh had heard tell of a crisp pep talk delivered by the Cleveland Browns coach on opening day of 1950, when the survivors of the disbanded All-America Football Conference were being called amateurs unfit to share a field with the great N.F.L. champion Philadelphia Eagles. "Just think," Brown said drily, "in a minute you'll get to touch Steve Van Buren." Cleveland 35, Philadelphia 10.

"Hey, guys," Walsh addressed the 49ers, "you know it isn't like this is your first high school game and you're afraid the coach is going to put you in." Their vapors were cured with a breath of laughter, the first move of the chess match. Though a botched kickoff return started San Francisco off on its own 6-yd. line, Walsh declined to deviate from his script of plays. When Freddie Solomon dropped pass No. 1 in the dangerous flat, Montana accepted him back in the huddle with a grin. Throwing for 331 yds. and three touchdowns, running for 59 yds. and a 6-yd. score, Montana experienced "the kind of day that quarterbacks dream about," as Shula put it. "He got outside our rush and made everything happen. We didn't have the speed to control him."

All season, Shula had reserved this awestruck tone for Dan Marino, outlavishing the writers in praise of the second-year quarterback with the "quick release." Players sometimes look at the great coaches with an expression that says, "As long as we have him, we're all right." But Shula had taken to gazing upon Marino this way. And after all, he had tossed 77 touchdown passes in two years. Against the 49ers, few Dolphins, certainly not Punter Reggie Roby, seemed quite themselves, but Marino was not horrible really, just human and 23. His most critical passes were, of all things, late and short.