San Francisco 49ers: 10 biggest ‘what ifs?’ in NFL Draft history

No. 2: What if 49ers never took a chance on Joe Montana?

The 1979 NFL Draft has a few stories of “what ifs?” especially with the wonderment surrounding whether the 49ers actually would have been better off not trading for O.J. Simpson and keeping the multitude of draft picks they surrendered to Buffalo for him.

In a roundabout way, though, the Niners eventually won the trade by landing another Greatest of All-Time quarterback, Joe Montana, who made it to Bill Walsh in Round 3.

Remember the earlier part about Steve Fuller? Yes, Walsh was interested in him. Yet he didn’t last to San Francisco’s first pick of the draft in Round 2.

In hindsight, Walsh was the genius. At the time, though, the scrawny and questionably mature Montana didn’t seem like he’d carve out much of a career at the NFL level. Yet Bleacher Report’s David Leon summed things up notably well:

"Bill Walsh was criticized for selecting Joe Montana with 82nd pick in the 1979 draft. Montana was selected at the very bottom of the third round, but some thought he was taken far too soon. Worthy of a fifth-rounder, tops. Also, the 49ers had pretty bad quarterback problems that year. If the 49ers had not been so stupid as to trade their first round pick to Buffalo, they could have gotten a real quarterback, like Jack Thompson. This is when Walsh dropped his famous quote: “Few men are qualified to evaluate the quarterback position. Fewer still are qualified to coach the position.”"

If Walsh had listened to some of his critics before selecting Montana, perhaps he finds another good signal-caller like Thompson. Or someone else. And maybe, just maybe, that quarterback would go on to have a Montana-like career under Walsh, while Montana wallows in obscurity somewhere else.

Or, just as possibly, Montana winds up having a GOAT-like career while Walsh’s search for a franchise quarterback continued throughout the first half of the 1980s.

Good thing we’ll never know.