If the 49ers defeat the Kansas City Chiefs next Sunday, they’ll raise the franchise’s first Super Bowl trophy since Steve Young led San Francisco past a different AFC West champion nearly 30 years ago.
Hold on.
The 49ers. Super Bowl. Steve Young?
Oh, no.
That Super Bowl.
The only Super Bowl the Chargers have reached, the contest between San Diego and San Francisco on Jan. 29, 1995, was no contest at all. In a massive comedown for a Bolts team that two Sundays earlier had won the AFC championship at Pittsburgh in an upset, Super Bowl XXIX served as a coronation for a Niners franchise that became the first to win five Lombardi Trophies.
The Chargers had almost no chance to keep it close, much less win.
“That’s one night I was on the sideline that I wished I was in the press box — I had no place to hide,” Dale Lindsey, the linebackers coach for those Bolts, quipped Friday from his San Diego residence.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God. Can I go to the press box and get out of here?’ It didn’t get better. It got worse.”
The final score from Miami Gardens: San Francisco 49, San Diego 26.
Young, the smooth lefty quarterback who’d succeeded Joe Montana, set a Super Bowl record by throwing six touchdown es. Three went to star receiver Jerry Rice.
What stood out most was this: the lopsidedness surprised no football experts.
Oddmakers favored the NFC champions by between 181/2 points and 19 points, a Super Bowl record that still stands.
Turned out, the 49ers themselves expected to breeze.
“Mike Shanahan said in pregame that we’d throw for eight TDs,” Young, 62, said on social media this week of the team’s offensive coordinator and playcaller.
When Rice told fellow 49ers star Deion Sanders to curb his nightlife during Super Bowl week, Sanders chided him, saying Rice knew full well the Niners would “beat the brakes off” the Chargers.
Until then the only Super Bowl underdog of more than 14 points was the New York Jets team that upset the Baltimore Colts as an 18-point underdog in the third Super Bowl.
Coach George Seifert’s 49ers showed from the outset they weren’t going to struggle like the 1968 Colts of Don Shula, who fell 16-7.
After Chargers captain Stan Brock lost the pregame coin flip, the 49ers began at their 41 with help from a face-mask penalty on the Chargers.
With his second throw Young hit Rice — poorly defended on a post route — for a 44-yard touchdown.
From there, the 49ers sprinted to leads of 14-0, 28-7 and 42-10.
The gritty Chargers were led that year by forceful lines, 22-year-old power back Natrone Means and a Junior Seau-powered defense that finished ninth in points allowed.
Bobby Ross’ club held the Steelers to 66 rushing yards. But Pittsburgh was nothing like the explosive 49ers, who outpointed powerful Dallas 38-28 two weeks earlier in the de facto Super Bowl.
Making matters worse for the Chargers, who scored no TDs in the first half of their two playoff games, the Niners knew them well.
“We played them three times that season,” Lindsey said. “We played them in the preseason. We played them in the regular season. And then we played them in the Super Bowl.
“They beat us worse every time. We just had to do everything to the maximum, or we didn’t have much of a chance.”
It wasn’t the first time Lindsey contested an NFL championship against an NFL dynasty.
He was a rookie on special teams for the Cleveland Browns team that lost the 1965 NFL title match.
“Twenty-three to 12,” he said Friday, correctly recalling the score.
The title was the third of five earned by Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers in a seven-year span.
Aside from receiving a $5,500 check for the second-place finish, Lindsey had little good to recount about that experience.
“We just fell flat on our face,” he said. “Snowy field in Green Bay. The game was worse than the score. Got our ass handed to us.
“Sometimes, the other team is just flat better than you are. We can’t blame it on anybody but ourselves. And the men I played for would not allow it to be said any other way.”
Thankfully, Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas next week shapes up as a much better contest than Super Bowl XXIX.
The explosive 49ers boast several offensive stars, among them running back Christian McCaffrey — whose father, Ed, caught a in Super Bowl 29.
Still, it’s unlikely the 49ers’ offensively minded head coach will be forecasting eight touchdowns to his players before next Sunday’s game.
His name? Kyle Shanahan. Mike’s son.
