In the 1990 NFC championship game against the Giants, defensive end Leonard Marshall knocked out Joe Montana with a blind-side sack Montana called the hardest hit of his career: it bruised his sternum, fractured a rib and knocked him out of the game. Montana claimed that Marshall “grabbed my hand on the way down, and after we hit the ground, he snapped it back and broke it. There are photographs of him doing it.”
Steve Young took over for Montana after the fourth-quarter injury and did reasonably well, but when Roger Craig fumbled as the 49ers were running out the clock and the Giants took the ball the other way for a game-winning Matt Bahr field goal-the final score was 15-13-it signified the end of the core of the 49ers dynasty, the 1987 through 1990 teams that went 29-3 on the road, not counting the win over the Bears in the 1988 NFC title game, and 51-12 overall in the regular season.
