10B
SPORTS EXTRA
Monday, August 23, 1993
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Move sparks more than Montana's career
From family man to team prankster, football star becomes legend in KC
The Associated Press
Before someone jumped the gate at his new house just to say "hello," and before someone else grabbed one of his empty beer cans off the table at a bar and stashed it in her purse, and even before 73,550 someone else's turned up at Arrowhead Stadium screaming "JOE! JOE! JOE!" until they were hoarse, this is how Joe Montana was welcomed to the Kansas City Chiefs:
Someone stole his underwear.
"I'm not saying I know who did it," new teammate Bennie Thompson says. "But if I was a guy with a dirtry-tricks reputation like Joe's, I know it wouldn't surprise me at all. Not ... at ... all.
"I mean, training camp just started, but you could see where some guy figured he'd better get Joe before Joe gets him. And so just to protect himself, this guy goes ahead and takes his underwear out of his locker . . .
"But how come, out of all the guys in this room, Joe comes after me?" Thompson says.
"Imean, I'mnewtothisteam, too. So how come he takes my underwear? Mine! Why don't you go ask the famous quarterback that?"
When the question is put to him, Montana is sitting in his holder, head down, elbows propped on his knees. When he straightens up, he shakes his head from side to side, and with a poker face that has duped well-paid defensive coordinators, ornishing defensive lineman and peeking defensive backs alike for more than a decade, he replies.
"I don't know what he's talking about."
And that's it. But beneath the bill of a baseball cap pulled low over a dirty blond hair, Joe's ice-blue eyes are positively dancing with mischief.
When the trade brought him to Kansas City from San Francisco last April, plenty of the bright lights he left behind assumed the worst: that he was through. Or else, they thought Montana moving to Kansas City was the punch line to a bad joke.
But as he scans the locker room — presumably in search of his next victim — both Joe and his revitalized right arm feel great. And when he finally settles on Marcus Allen, the one-time Los Angeles Raider and another Hall of Famer relocating from the West Coast, it probably occurs to the famous quarterback that he still might get the last laugh, after all.
Joe brings expectations
One thing Joe knows: Life would be easier if a reputation as a prankster was the only one he brought to the midwest from the 49er dynasty he left behind.
But if Joe was only funny, no way would the Chiefs' front office gamble a first-round pick and a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract on a 37 year old. Especially a 37-year-old passer with a surgically repaired right elbow who hasn't thrown a meaningful pass in more than two years. And no way does one of the largest, most electrified crowds in club history materialize for a preseason game on a sizzling August night with even hotter expectations.
Joe knows this, too. They expect the greatest quarterback of all time in his prime to show up for every game. They want the cotton mouthed, heart-stopping, 90-yard drives in the last seconds of the biggest games. They want memories like Montana-to-Taylor against Cincinnati in Super Bowl XIII, or Montana-to-Clark against the Cowboys in the NPC championship seven years before that, or Montana-to-Rice against anybody, any time.
Only they want him to produce those memories with a receiving corps several rungs below the group he had in San Francisco, with a line built for drive-blocking instead of trap-blocking, like in San Francisco. And with an entire offensive unit trying to learn a new system — San Francisco's — that only Joe knows.
He also knows there are more Super Bowls behind him — four — than could possibly be ahead, and fewer rabbits to be pulled out of his helmet. And he knows that just because the percentages haven't caught up with him doesn't mean that age won't.
"After a while, you lose something on your arm," Montana said. "But you don't need a lot of speed in my job."
"It isn't all of those where you're running all the time, like a running back or wide receiver. But you lose something. All skills, to a certain degree, are that way, no matter what position you're in.
"Mentally, I'm probably better," he said. "Physically, I don't know because I've been out for two years. I've been throwing the ball well during camp and I feel pretty confident. But I'll just have to wait and let it take care of itself."
Yet none of that — neither his own uncertainty nor others' expectations — is keeping him awake at night.
"No," Montana said, "because if I hadn't thought about putting myself in that position, I never would have left.
"I could have had it easy in San Francisco."
KC offers better family life
He is right, of course. Back by the bay in California, Montana was practically a civic treasure, the first fixture out-of-towners think of when they think of San Francisco. But through a kind of addition by subtraction, the move to Kansas City has enriched him.
He now has the two things he wants most — a contending team to direct and a system that maximizes the skills he has left — without the thing he liked least: a quarterbacking controversy that developed more twists and turns than a long-running soap opera.
Besides, Joe's wife, Jennifer Montana, explained, the easy way is not always the best one.
"He's happier," she said after the move. "He's happy about playing again. It has taken a lot of weight off his shoulders not to be stuck in the place he was in San Francisco.
"He might not say much about that, and with him it's always difficult to tell what's going on. Joe's always kept his composure so well that you can't tell he's getting ready for a preseason game or the Super Bowl. But
Joe Montana
there's definitely a little more bounce in his step. He's happier all around. I think we all are, in a way.
"I feel kind of fortunate to come to the Midwest. The neighborhood is much different from San Francisco. We were more secluded there. Here, it's open and friendly. The kids can ride their bikes around the block.
Joe's first changes were his uniform and his number. The Chiefs retired No. 16 in honor of Len Dawson and so no big deal, Joe said he'd like No. 19 because that was his number back in midget league.
"We were lucky, not having to move around like plenty of players' families, until now. But change can be good. And this is a way for the kids — for all of us — to learn that things change."
Montana reacts to change
Montana's next adjustment was remembering where the light switches were while padding around in the dark at the new house. Adjusting to
new teammates was easier than that.
"I'm pretty easy to get along with and I can figure out how to fit into most situations. I'm not a controversial-type of guy," he said. "Some guys, when they come in, you know it's going to be tough to fit in."
"If you try to find a place on the team, you know, make a place on the team, guys see with them that and they know. You're with them every day, you can't hide, so you just go about your business the way you normally do — and let them dictate where things go."
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out where that would lead. Eventually.
"At first, yeah, I think there were some skepics," said Chiefs offensive coordinator Paul Hackett, who spent three years as an assistant under Bill Walsh at San Francisco, where he helped refine the scheme now in place in Kansas City.
"There were questions in people's minds; it was only natural," Hackett said. "The guy hadn't played in two years and he wasn't getting younger. On top of that, we kept him under wraps early when he came in.
"But one had to see much before the sense developed that he could still throw. And once they had that, everything else fell into place. No one had to be reminded what the guy had accomplished.
"But you know what surprised me? He's throwing harder than before. He was never a fastball threer or anything like that. But in rehabilitating the arm and the shoulder, he made his whole upper body stronger.
"Now just think about that. You've got Joe Montana, with a new enthusiasm and a joy about playing. And, he's actually throwing the ball harder."
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