Joe Montana joins Sports Illustrated from Radio Row ahead of Super Bowl 58. The hall of fame quarterback says Patrick Mahomes has his own ranking in the conversation for greatest quarterbacks to play the game because of how special he is.
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00:00 Ladies and gentlemen, we have four-time Super Bowl champion Joe Montana, a legend.
00:06 How you doing Joe? I'm doing great, how about yourself? I'm doing good man, let's
00:10 let's get into this. Okay, so the Niners are back in the Super Bowl. Yep.
00:14 If Brock Purdy gets the job done, would he be the greatest story in NFL history right now?
00:19 Well, I mean obviously where you think, where you look and you see where he, you
00:24 know, where he came from. Yeah. And you know all the doubts that are there, but I
00:29 think one of the things that he proves and you can go all the way back like
00:33 Brady proves also is that the NFL still hasn't figured out the draft. Yeah.
00:40 I don't care what they say and the calm, you can go to the combine all you want,
00:44 but you just don't know who's gonna make that transition and he, you know, he's done
00:49 a great job. Yeah. Great job with it and he's got a big opportunity coming up on
00:54 Sunday and it'll be fun to watch. What do you think he's done so well taking over
00:59 you know under the helmet being the guy for that team leading that team? What do
01:03 you think he's done well? I think one of the things you you'll see is that the
01:07 quarterback that's playing well in a system, he's figured out the system, right?
01:11 And because they're all different. Yeah. When you look at some of those guys and
01:15 it's all deep stuff, right? Here there's a combination of those things. I mean he's
01:20 he understands how that offense works, he's figured it out quickly, and he
01:24 doesn't make the big mistake, right? He knows he doesn't have to pressure the
01:28 ball downfield. He's got the, he's got guys like Debo and McCaffrey who can, you
01:32 know, they're gonna find it and they're gonna make people miss and you can have
01:36 a big play without having to force it down the field. Right, right, right. Okay,
01:41 let's talk about the other team for a minute. Patrick Mahomes. Where do you see
01:46 him in the ranks of all the quarterbacks that's come and played? Well, he has his
01:51 own rank I think. Yeah. Because he's different. Okay, tell me why, tell me why.
01:55 There's only one of those and I mean the things that he does and week after week,
02:00 you know, sidearm, I'll turn around left-handed, whatever it takes, he gets it
02:07 done and finds a way accurately and you know they've changed a lot of receivers
02:12 on him and so he's still been able to play no matter what and but just
02:17 watching him is fun because you never know what's gonna happen.
02:21 For sure. So, Christian McCaffrey, would you say he's the best non-quarterback in
02:28 this game? We have two great quarterbacks, would you say he's the
02:31 best player on the field outside of those two guys? Well, I think so. I mean
02:35 if you look at the things that he does offensively, it's hard to compare
02:39 offense to defensive guys, right? Because the offensive guys have a little bit more
02:45 to do. If you're a defensive back, you know, you got to cover
02:49 somebody. Well, here, you know, he's got to catch the ball, he's
02:52 got to run, he's running with the ball, he's blocking, I mean he does a little bit
02:56 of everything and very slippery, right? Make you miss and still has the
03:03 speed to take it most of the way and another guy that's fun to watch, that was
03:08 big plus when they brought him in and took a lot of pressure off of Devo and I
03:13 think those two kind of, when they're on the field together, it makes it tough.
03:17 Yes, yes. Okay, so we obviously know you played in four, you won all four of the
03:21 ones that you played in. Was there any, like a certain special routine that you
03:26 went into before each game that you had to do each time or was it just like each
03:31 one was different? The first one I got stuck on the last bus and we were going
03:37 to the game and we got stopped, we got stopped because the vice president
03:42 decided to come to the game. So we're sitting there looking at our watches
03:46 going, hey we're supposed to be on the field here in about 20 minutes and I
03:51 never got on that bus again. So then I get up in the morning, go to a training
03:57 table and then I go straight to the stadium. I didn't care how long the game
04:00 was, we never had offensive meetings on the day of the game so I just slip out
04:05 of there and take a taxi to the stadium and then so I was there early.
04:10 Okay, so you're here on behalf of Pfizer, do you want to tell us about your partnership?
04:14 Yeah, no, we've been partnered up for a while now talking about
04:18 pneumococcal pneumonia and this serious lung disease and how vaccination can
04:23 help prevent it and trying to have people understand who's at risk and why
04:27 and how. Like for people like me over 65, how old's your dad?
04:33 Yeah, he's up there too.
04:35 Or have a high risk and so can younger people too, especially if you
04:41 have other symptoms like or things that are going on like asthma can be
04:48 another precursor to tell you, hey you got to watch out. And so vaccination, we're
04:53 just trying to get people to understand that if you want to know a lot more
04:56 about it, go to knownemonia.com and that's K-N-O-W, pneumonia.com and there's a
05:03 lot of great information on there.
05:05 Before we get you out of here, you've been on a lot of Sports Illustrated
05:09 covers. Do you have one that's most memorable to you?
05:13 There's two really. The one with me and with all the kids and my wife.
05:18 Okay.
05:19 And there's one where I'm looking up laughing and everybody says, what are you doing?
05:25 We were playing a stupid game, the quarterbacks, we played this game where
05:28 you would, the temporary goal posts that we had where they move around, the
05:33 hollow at the top. So we would take tape rolls and see who could get the
05:38 most in the top hole before practice started.
05:41 Cool. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Montana, legend. Thank you so much for your time.
05:45 My pleasure.
05:46 (whooshing)