This year’s team shares similarities with 1981 champs
Shanahan and Walsh. Garoppolo and Montana. It doesn’t stop there!
The wildly creative head coach, dialing up plays that confound one opponent after another. The young defensive stalwarts, savvy beyond their years. The gauntlet of cliffhangers and nail-biters. A dormant franchise suddenly jump-started to life.
The 1981 49ers have seen that movie. Thirty-eight years ago they were sad sacks, afterthoughts. Then they rewrote the narrative and became a dynasty.
It is uncertain how this season will turn out for the 2019 49ers. But it appears this team is reading the 1981 team’s playbook. You can see the family resemblance.
“Those two teams definitely have one thing in common,” said Randy Cross, a guard on the 1981 team. “Both teams had gone through hellacious years.”
The 1981 49ers were coming off a 6-10 season that included an eight-game losing streak and had missed the playoffs eight years in a row.
The 2019 edition was coming off a 4-12 season that included a six-game losing streak and had missed the playoffs five years in a row.
Head coach Bill Walsh was the genius behind the 1981 team. In the third season of his first head-coaching job, he posted a 13-3 record. Current head coach Kyle Shanahan is in the third season of his first head-coaching job. And the 49ers are 13-3.
Both the 1981 49ers and the 2019 49ers had promising quarterbacks. But Joe Montana and Jimmy Garoppolo had yet to play a full season.
Running back Earl Cooper was part of Walsh’s offense in the season that would end with the franchise’s first Super Bowl victory.
“I like watching them,” said Cooper from Texas, where he just retired from being a special resource teacher at Pflugerville High School.
“I look at the stats and I don’t see a 1,500-yard rusher, but (receiver) Deebo Samuel is like Freddie Solomon, when Freddie used to run the reverses. I don’t know if he’s as fast as Freddie but he’s pretty good.”
Both teams used running back by committee after losing projected starters. Paul Hofer was the perfect vessel for Walsh’s West Coast offense, but he suffered a knee injury in 1980 that continued to nag him in 1981.
Likewise, Shanahan had high hopes for Jerick McKinnon, who was coming off a knee injury suffered in 2018.
McKinnon had a setback during training camp last summer and was put on injured reserve. Shanahan didn’t seem to miss a beat.
Using a three-man committee of Raheem Mostert, Matt Breida and Tevin Coleman, the 49ers were second in the NFL with 2,305 rushing yards.
Defense was key to both the 1981 and 2019 teams. Walsh’s first two teams were ravaged by opponents. At one point he moaned, “We’re at the mercy of the forward pass.”
Walsh drafted three defensive backs — Ronnie Lott, Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson — before the 1981 season. He also signed crusty Rams linebacker Jack “Hacksaw” Reynolds. Four games into the season, Walsh traded for Chargers pass rusher Fred Dean.
“Finally we had a defensive draft,” said linebacker Dan Bunz. “Every time the ball went over my head in ’78 and ’79, it was the kiss of death. But then we were surrounded by good guys. Everything just got better.”
This is getting a little ahead of our story, but Bunz is still remembered for the The Stop — a third-down tackle that was part of a four-play goal-line stand in the 49ers’ 26-21 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.
The current 49ers have waged a couple of epic stands themselves, one against the Los Angeles Rams and the other against the Seattle Seahawks in their most recent game.
Both teams were/are clutch. The 1981 49ers played in 10 one-score games, winning eight. They went down to the final play four times, winning twice. The current team played eight one-score games, winning five.
Six games went down to the final play; they split them.
“Winning games like that, going down the field and kicking that field goal against the Seahawks and the Saints, that’s something you’ve got in your back pocket forever,” Cross said. “You look at the quarterback in the huddle, and you know you can do it.”
Can the 49ers do it? The first answer comes Saturday when they host the Minnesota Vikings.