by Adam Lazarus
Pittsburgh surprisingly cut Bahr prior to the start of the 1981 season, so when San Francisco offered him a temp job (49er Ray Wersching was injured in the opener), he accepted. Within a month, Wersching returned and Bahr was shipped to Cleveland. Upon exiting San Francisco’s locker room, he left a note on the bulletin board: “Good luck in the Super Bowl, I know you’ll be there.”
Not long after leaving that note, Bahr returned to Candlestick. In Week Eleven, the 5-6 Browns traveled to San Francisco, and with forty-three seconds remaining, Bahr nailed the game-winning field goal to defeat the 49ers.
“I can’t say enough good things about the 49ers,” he said after the win. “I made a lot of friends in my short (four-week) stay here. It’s good to come back and say hello.”
Bahr did not enjoy the rest of 1981 nearly as much as his former teammates. The 15-12 victory was Cleveland’s last of the season and they finished 5-11; San Francisco won their next eight games, including Super Bowl XVI.
He spent eight more seasons kicking for Cleveland, but by age thirty-four, Bahr was again out of a job. The Browns cut him during the 1990 preseason in favor of a Canadian Football League kicker. Only an injured right groin suffered by Giants kicker Raul Allegre kept Bahr from retirement. Beginning in Week Four, Bahr became an efficient replacement for New York in 1990. He converted seventeen of twenty-three field goal attempts, including one in the final seconds that completed Jeff Hostetler’s unexpected comeback against Phoenix. Hostetler—who served as the Giants’ holder—found plenty to talk about with the team’s new kicker.
Bahr earned a degree in electrical engineering from Penn State: he too followed his older brother, all-American kicker Chris, to State College, Pennsylvania. Relying on consistent accuracy, Matt surpassed each of his brother’s school records during three varsity seasons from 1976 through 1978. Among his many Nittany Lion teammates those years were Ron and Doug Hostetler.
“I held for a lot of kickers,” Jeff Hostetler later said. “Matt Bahr had, without a doubt, the greatest disposition as far as a kicker, because, lots of them, you can do it a hundred times in a row and hold the ball the same way, but if they miss, it was always, ‘you leaned [the ball] too far forward or you leaned it a little this, or you just missed the mark.’ Matt Bahr was always ‘just get it down.’”
On the chewed-up natural grass of Candlestick Park, Hostetler “got it down,” enabling Bahr to convert his third field goal in three attempts during the 1990 NFC Championship Game. The successful forty-six-yarder—six minutes after John Taylor’s touchdown—made the score 13-9.
Given the Giants’ inability to score touchdowns in more than six quarters against San Francisco that season, to win the conference title, they would likely have to pitch a shutout the rest of the way.
The Giants forced a punt, and after Ottis Anderson gobbled up thirty-six yards to set up a first and ten inside the red zone, momentum had seemed to shift. But the offense failed to gain another yard, and when Bahr hooked a thirty-seven-yard field goal wide left early in the final period, all Bill Parcells could do was seethe in disgust.
Parcells’ mood only worsened over the next few minutes. After the Giants made another defensive stop, Hostetler hit wide receiver Mark Ingram on a fourteen-yard square-in route. The first down, which pushed them into San Francisco territory, was costly, however.
To make the crisp throw, Hostetler stepped upfield, straightening his front leg. Just as the ball left his fingertips, 49ers defensive lineman Jim Burt—a former Giant—dove at Hostetler and locked ahold of his knee, twisting him to the ground.
Several members of the Giants’ sideline, including Parcells, were outraged and shouted at both Burt and the referees. They thought the hit was both late and a cheap shot.
“That’s the way Burt plays,” said Lawrence Taylor. “He goes for the knees. So I yelled, ‘If that’s the way you want to play, somebody else is going to lose a quarterback.’”
Wincing and curled up on his side, Hostetler semi-coherently answered the questions of trainers and the team doctor. He eventually stood up and slowly limped off the field with a hyperextended knee.
For the second time in six weeks, Parcells had to send an unprepared quarterback with minimal game-time experience onto the field during a critical game. Under the Giants’ first- and second-string quarterbacks, points had come sparingly that year against San Francisco; thirteen-year veteran Matt Cavanaugh couldn’t move the ball either. Coming off the sidelines with only seconds to warm up, he fired one pass ten yards over his receiver’s head, was sacked on the next play, and New York had to punt.
While doctors and coaches surrounded Hostetler on the bench, the defense took the field, hopeful they could keep the deficit at four points. Once again, they followed Lawrence Taylor’s lead.
On third and ten from his own twenty-three-yard line, Montana dropped back to pass and looked left where he saw an opening in the defense. He cocked his arm, ready to throw a post-pattern to John Taylor. A more cautious Everson Walls sprung toward Taylor—not the football—and shut Montana’s window.
Montana sensed the pocket was collapsing and rolled right, eyes glued downfield.
Deep along the near sideline, he spied Rice, two steps ahead of safety Myron Guyton. He also noticed Taylor bearing down on him. Montana slammed on the brakes, set his feet, and with Lawrence Taylor unable to pull up, reached back to heave the ball downfield and end the Giants’ season. But setting his feet to throw bought defensive end Leonard Marshall an extra split-second of pass-rushing time.
Prior to the play, Marshall lined up outside of 49ers left tackle Bubba Paris. At the snap, Marshall gave Paris a head fake to the inside, forcing the 350-pounder off balance. Marshall swam around Paris, but was unable to keep his feet. Fullback Tom Rathman pushed him to the ground. As Montana veered to his right, Marshall staggered to his feet, lunged for the quarterback, then stumbled again. Showing uncanny persistence, Marshall crawled on his hands and knees until he could get upright. When Montana paused to avoid Lawrence Taylor, Marshall closed the gap and plowed right into the back of the unsuspecting league MVP. For a moment, Montana looked like he was wearing Marshall as a cape.
“It was a clean lick,” Marshall told reporters following the game. “I wasn’t trying to put him out of the game or end his career.”
End over end the football floated up in the air before hitting the ground thirty-five feet from where the vicious blow had been delivered. Cornerback Mark Collins leapt toward the ball but could not cradle it. Offensive lineman Steve Wallace swooped in to make the recovery. The 49ers had retained possession but now had bigger problems: Montana was hurt.
Doubled over, Montana knelt motionless on the ground. Steve Young, the 49ers’ backup, charged onto the field. Montana gently rolled over onto his back and lay there for several minutes. Trainers sat him up and “Joe Cool” soon got to his feet, only to spend the rest of the day huddled with doctors and paramedics. He had a broken bone in his hand, a bruised sternum, and struggled to breathe.
It had been a rough week for Montana. Thursday night, he was hit with a flu bug and missed practice on both Friday and Saturday. On the first play from scrimmage, Montana didn’t look sharp, tossing a low, wobbly pass a few yards short of his receiver’s feet: Lawrence Taylor clobbered him just as he released the ball.
“After the second series, when he left from under center, he was already passive, you could see it,” said Giants safety Dave Duerson. “He was expecting to get hit. Even when he handed off he was flinching.”
Early in the fourth quarter, Taylor accidently kicked Montana in the knee at the end of a pass play. He limped off the field. Half an hour later, Marshall clobbered Montana, knocking him out of the game. Although nobody knew it at the time, Joe Montana had taken his last snap as the 49ers’ starting quarterback. Steve Young, the former Brigham Young University star and seldom-used professional, warmed up along the sideline.
Across the field, Jeff Hostetler—the Giants’ backup
who had waited years for an opportunity to play—was ready to return despite a throbbing knee.
“Coach Parcells asked me how the knee felt, if I could go several times,” Hostetler said. “Finally I told him I was going. As long as it was stable, I was going back in. This was a huge game and I’ve waited a long time for the opportunity.”
Hostetler’s comeback went from improbable to incredible when, on second and seven he avoided a sack, scrambled left, and sprinted to within a yard of the first down. But on third and short, a pair of 49ers bottled up Ottis Anderson behind the line of scrimmage, and the Giants’ drive stalled.
Sean Landeta and the special teams unit got into position near midfield. The “very predictable” Giants did not punt the ball.
“They were ready to get their wall going for Taylor, and I noticed an opening on the right,” said linebacker Gary Reasons, who served as personal protector in the Giants punt team. “We had the play on all game, and I had the go-ahead to call it when I saw it.”
The play Reasons called was a fake punt. Prior to Landeta receiving the ball from long-snapper Steve DeOssie, Reasons had the option of shouting out an audible. The call alerted DeOssie to snap the ball to Reasons and instructed the Giants on the line of scrimmage to block for him.
DeOssie snapped the ball directly to Reasons, who ran untouched for thirty yards, until a bewildered John Taylor cut him down.
“I’m just looking for a hole in the line,” Reasons said. “You could have driven a Mack truck through that one.”
Reasons’ run gave New York life at the San Francisco twenty-four-yard line. But once again, the Giants could not get the ball in the end zone. Three plays produced three yards, and Bahr was sent in to attempt a fifth field goal, which he made.
Less than six minutes remained; New York trailed 13-12 and needed to get the ball back. That didn’t appear likely during the 49ers’ ensuing drive, which ate up thirty-seven yards and more than three minutes of game clock. The Giants looked buried.
“I remember Mark Ingram saying, ‘Here’s my chance to go to Tampa; my chance to play in the Super Bowl, and now it’s going down the drain,’” recalled Ottis Anderson.
“And I said, ‘Ingy, it’s my destiny; we’re gonna go to the Super Bowl.’
“‘Come on, Juice,’ he said. ‘They got the ball. They’re running out the clock.’
“I said, ‘I’m telling you, Ingy; it’s my destiny; it’s gonna happen, something’s gonna happen.’”
Ingram had good reason to be pessimistic. Roger Craig had helped the 49ers preserve dozens of victories during the past eight seasons. But the running back turned thirty that year, and a nagging knee injury forced him to miss five games; he had never missed a game prior to 1990.
Although Craig told John Madden before the NFC Championship Game that he “felt as good today as [I’ve] felt all year,” the 49ers’ ground game totaled just thirty-nine yards on eleven carries. Not until three-and-a-half minutes remained in the fourth quarter did San Francisco gain a single rushing first down. They would not get another.
Craig had already fumbled once on that possession, the first play of the drive; teammate Bubba Paris recovered it. With the clock approaching two-and-a-half minutes, Craig accepted a handoff (his third in three plays) and plunged into a blur of his own linemen and defenders. One member of that pile was Giants nose tackle Erik Howard, who got two hands on Craig and a helmet on the football, which squirted out. At the Giants’ forty-three-yard line, Lawrence Taylor swallowed up the fumble.
“I knew we’d come up with something sooner or later,” Howard said about the game’s lone turnover. “We’d been fighting so hard the whole game.”
Behind by only a single point, New York was now content—for the first time in eight quarters against the vaunted San Francisco defense—with a field goal attempt.
“To me, it was like being in the backyard with my two older brothers against my younger brother Todd and I. It didn’t matter what age we were, it was us against them,” Hostetler said years later. “And we would take a beating, and we’d get up and keep going. And for me, that’s what I was going to do. I think that we were so focused, we were in a battle with these guys; we’d played them earlier and we’d lost the game and we knew we should have beat ’em. And it was the same [in the NFC Championship Game]. We knew we should beat ’em and that I could attack them on the edges and make some plays. And that’s what we did.”
The mid-December injury to Phil Simms—a Super Bowl MVP and the franchise’s starter for virtually an entire decade—had been a terrible blow to the Giants. But there was one glimmer of silver lining in the unintended quarterback swap. Hostetler’s athleticism and mobility added a new dimension to the Giants offense, a dimension never explored during Simms’ long tenure.
“This might be just what the Giants need at this time,” a league insider told Newsday’s Bob Glauber in late December of 1990. “Simms can’t run, and Hostetler can buy time. Teams can’t load up any more because they don’t know what Hostetler is going to do.”
Hostetler’s agility produced more than just rushing yards or the occasional rushing touchdown. When he moved away from the pocket, defensive backs and linebackers were caught between two choices: remain tethered to the receiver, or attempt to tackle the quarterback before he gains positive yardage. In case of the latter, Hostetler’s receivers knew to break off of their routes and improvise. As a result, defenders’ coverage responsibilities—who covers who, who has which zone—became muddled, oftentimes enabling receivers to find an opening.
To start their last-minute, game-deciding drive, Hostetler faked a handoff to Ottis Anderson, escaped the grasp of two 49er linemen, then bolted to his right. Just a few steps from the sideline, he hurled the ball across his body toward Mark Bavaro for a nineteen-yard pickup.
“The pass to Bavaro was supposed to be a drop-back pass,” Hostetler recalled. “But when the rush got heavy, I moved out to the right and the flow went with me. Mark made a great move against the grain to get open.”
Passing on first down had been essential to New York’s crushing playoff victory over the Bears. And against the 49ers, Bavaro’s fifth catch of the day brought the Giants past midfield as the clock ticked to the two-minute warning. But when the action resumed, the Giants returned to the ground. A trademark off-tackle run didn’t fool anyone in Candlestick Park, especially 49ers defensive end Kevin Fagan, who brought O. J. Anderson down for a four-yard loss.
With the line of scrimmage now pushed back to San Francisco’s forty-three-yard line, the Giants needed at least one more first down to even consider attempting the game-winning field goal. And despite possessing all three of his time-outs, Parcells let the clock dwindle. Less than eighty seconds remained by the time New York ran their next play. It was worth the wait.
Faced with a second and fourteen, Hostetler took the snap, retreated into the pocket, then sprinted to his right. From an off-balance position, he fired the ball near the sideline, directly at the stomach of Stephen Baker.
“When they called the play, I said, ‘you know what, this is it. This is gonna be the best route I’m gonna run in my life. This is what I worked all my life for, this one moment right here to get our team to the Super Bowl. I ran that route so hard,” remembered Baker, the Giants’ five-foot, eight-inch receiver. “Oddly enough, we call it a ‘squirrel route’ because they used to say I looked like a little squirrel running so fast down the field. It was a ten-yard out and then I bursted up field for eighteen yards, acting like I’m running deep and then stop on a dime, and Hostetler’s rolling outside to my side and fires it right for the sticks.”
Baker caught the ball and delicately touched both feet down in bounds.
Hostetler’s college coach, Don Nehlen, had seen him make this play hundreds of times: during practices, in the “Backyard Brawl” rivalry matchup against Pitt, and in two bowl games. Still, even Nehlen was amazed as he watched, in person, his son-in-law perform.
“Je
ff scrambled out of there and how in the hell he ever found the guy, to get him the ball, I’ll never know,” said Nehlen, who was in California to coach college’s East-West All-Star Game later that month. “Jeff was absolutely unbelievable in that game.”
Now it was third and one at the 49ers’ twenty-seven-yard line. This was the play of the game, of the season. A conversion here would do much more than shorten the winning attempt for Matt Bahr. A fresh set of downs meant that the Giants could drain the clock and kick a field goal without having to give the ball back to San Francisco.
Hostetler handed the ball off to Ottis Anderson, who plowed toward a path cleared out by Jumbo Elliott and William Roberts.
“We let Ottis take it and hit it up in there, we felt we could always make a yard,” Ron Erhardt recalled. “We had that mentality.”
The Giants put the ball in Anderson’s hands once more, then, on third down, with one time-out and twelve seconds remaining, Hostetler nudged into the line in order to position the ball in the center of the field. Out trotted Matt Bahr. The 49ers called a time-out to “ice” the kicker.
“It could be an eternity for Matt Bahr if he should miss, and he’d never know he got on the airplane if he makes it,” Pat Summerall, ironically once a New York Giants kicker himself, told the CBS audience. “That is a lonely world, believe me.”
Giants receiver Mark Ingram actually wanted to be alone at that moment. Hands locked together and with both knees touching the ground, he prayed silently, then crossed himself.
Bill Parcells and Bill Belichick paced up and down the Giants’ sidelines, passing a large group of Giants all holding hands. Bavaro, Greg Jackson, Roger Brown, and the rest of the prayer circle refused to watch.
“Those last few minutes we were all praying. And I mean praying like we’ve never prayed before,” Jackson remembered a few years later.