Ranking every San Francisco 49ers quarterback since 1980
The San Francisco 49ers are a franchise that went from irrelevancy to back-to-back Hall of Fame quarterback play, and then to decades of uncertainty at quarterback.
When head coach Bill Walsh joined the team in 1979, the team was coming off of a 2-14 season. In his first two seasons, he totaled eight wins. But in his third season, he ended up with a 13-3 record and a Super Bowl win.
Walsh would win three Super Bowls before calling it quits and letting his long-time assistant George Seifert take over as head coach and lead the team to two more championships. Between the two of them, they coached two starting quarterbacks, both of whom would end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
After the era of Walsh and Seifert, though, there has been a carousel of starting quarterbacks for the 49ers franchise.
Let's take a look and rank all the starting quarterbacks for the franchise from 1980 to the current day.
1. Joe Montana (1980 to 1990)
The obvious No. 1 on this list is quarterback Joe Montana. The 1979 third-round draft pick from Notre Dame quickly made himself the darling of this franchise by just winning and then doing it again and again.
Montana would end up winning the Super Bowl in the his third season in the NFL. He would lead the 49ers to a victory in Super Bowl XVI against the Cincinnati Bengals by a score of 26-21, winning the Super Bowl MVP in the process.
In his time as the Niners' starting quarterback, Montana would end up winning four Super Bowls, three Super Bowl MVP awards and two regular-season MVP awards. He would be the only quarterback in the club with those accolades for a long time.
In addition to those numbers, Montana would end his career with eight Pro Bowl selections and three first-team All-Pro selections. He also finished his career with San Francisco as the top passer in franchise history with 35,124 passing yards.
All those numbers in addition to the hardware that he won during his time with the 49ers has made him stand out as one of the greatest quarterback of all time not only with the Niners, but in NFL history.