Steve Young gestures to the fans during Sunday's ceremony to retire his number 8.

AP photo / Ben Margot

SAN FRANCISCO -- The 49ers retired Steve Young's jersey number 8 in ceremonies at halftime. Eleven years after Joe Montana's jersey number 16 was retired.

It's not as if Young isn't used to playing second fiddle to Joe Cool in San Francisco.

Montana was -- and still is -- The Man in the 49ers' pantheon of heroes, the charismatic superstar who led them to four Super Bowl victories. The last was in 1989, when he threw for a then-record five touchdowns in a 55-10 rout of the Broncos in Super Bowl XXIV in New Orleans.

Young was Montana's backup then, having come to the Niners two years earlier from Tampa Bay. It wasn't until the 1991 season that coach George Seifert turned the offense over to Young. San Francisco didn't make the playoffs that year, although they were 10-6, and then lost in the NFC Championship Game the next two years, both times to the Dallas Cowboys.

So it was a momentous win for Young when, in 1994, he finally led the 49ers past Dallas, throwing for two touchdowns and running for another in a 38-28 victory that sent San Francisco to the Super Bowl, in Miami, to take on the Chargers.

"This is an absolutely critical game for Steve," Bill Walsh, who had coached the 49ers to their first three Super Bowl wins, said at the time.

"I think this is the last step for Steve to be considered one of the great quarterbacks, because he has done everything else. This is the one thing that he has been missing, and the thing that he has been so criticized for not having.

"The people of San Francisco," Walsh said, "have not welcomed Steve because of their total adoration for Joe Montana. I don't think Steve will ever unseat Joe as the Bay Area's quarterback, but this will establish something for him if he can win."

And win, he did.

In spectacular fashion -- breaking Montana's record by throwing for six touchdowns as the Niners won the Super Bowl in a rout, 49-26. Young completed 24 of 36 passes, for 325 yards, without an interception.

After accepting his MVP trophy, Young talked about what the win meant to him.

"All along," he said, "I felt like I was playing great football. But the critics and skeptics continued to backpedal. They still had this game to fall back on. It's nice to put that away.

"The soap opera situation I went through made me tougher. I'm not sure they made me a better player, but they made me mentally tougher. To play quarterback in the NFL, especially in San Francisco, you have to gain and maintain a certain mental toughness."

It wasn't easy to play in Montana's shadow, but Young learned to handle it.

"It became a matter of how to look at life," he said. "Do you go to work every day with this weight on your shoulders, or do you go to work and say: 'Hey, this is a great job -- the most fun in my whole life?' "

The 49ers had a great offense, originally designed by Walsh, with Montana at the helm, and carried on successfully by Seifert and Young.

As Bill Parcells said when he was coaching in New England, and the Patriots were heading out to San Francisco to take on Young and the 49ers: "They're not really worried about what we're doing. They just run their offense, make their reads, and get the ball to the guy who's open. And, when nobody's open, Steve Young scrambles."

Young's running ability was the one edge he clearly had over Montana. Both were accurate passers -- Young completed 70.3 percent of his attempts in that '94 championship season -- but no QB ever was better in the clutch than Montana.