San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Super Bowl campaign of 1981 didn’t start like one for 49ers
Don’t ever play liar’s dice with someone who claims they came away from the 49ers’ 1981 season opener with visions of a trip to the Super Bowl dancing in their head.
Just like the 49ers in that game, you’re going to lose.
The 49ers looked every bit the team that went 6-10 the previous year and 2-14 in each of the two before that in losing 24-17 on the road to Detroit.
“The biggest difference between the game the 49ers played yesterday against the Lions and the four they played last month,” wrote The Chronicle’s Ira Miller, “was that this one counted, even though it looked like another exhibition.”
Bill Walsh, beginning his third season as the 49ers’ head coach, had moved on from Steve DeBerg at quarterback and started Joe Montana, with Guy Benjamin as the No. 2. In the ninth start of his career, Montana finished an efficient 18-for-28 for 195
Editor’s note: 2021 is the 40th anniversary of the 49ers’ stunning run to the franchise’s first Super Bowl. Throughout this season, The Chronicle will look back, week-by-week, at how that improbable season unfolded. Today: Week 1 against Detroit.
yards, with a touchdown and an interception, but was sacked four times. Only four 49ers caught passes: Freddie Solomon (eight for 94 yards and the TD), Dwight Clark (5/57), Earl Cooper (3/11) and Charle Young (2/33).
The big issue with the offense was Walsh trying to figure out who to put in the backfield with Montana. Miller noted that the 49ers used 10 combinations of personnel against the Lions, none of which stood out enough to make a difference. Ricky Patton led all rushers with 72 yards on 15 carries, Walt Easley added 23 on seven and Cooper — at this point in his career a fullback — had nine carries for 22 yards.
The 49ers’ defense did its fair share, limiting Detroit’s Billy Sims — a second-year player out of Oklahoma who won the Heisman Trophy as a junior in 1978 — to 59 carries on 21 yards and sacked Gary Danielson (196 yards passing) four times.
San Francisco twice tied the game in the fourth quarter, but was finished off when Sims scored on a 1-yard run with 18 seconds to play. The drive began with a 17-yard reverse by Leonard Thompson, on which there was an apparent non-call that infuriated Walsh.
“It was a horrible clip ... that everybody could see and (the nearest official) acted like a pro wrestling referee (and) didn’t quite see it,” Walsh said. “I can’t believe it.”
That run — and a 16-yarder by Dexter Bussey on the next play — put the Lions in position to run Sims six consecutive times on their way to the game-winner.
The loss marked the fifth defeat in six season openers for the 49ers, who as 1981 began had not reached the playoffs since 1972.