The Catch is probably the most iconic play in NFL history. Joe Montana drops back, looks to the end zone and hits Dwight Clark to stun the Dallas Cowboys and send San Francisco to the Super Bowl. However, rumors have always subsisted that Joe Montana was actually trying to throw the ball away. So what if he had succeeded in doing so?
The Cowboys win the 1981 NFC championship game and eventually the Super Bowl behind quarterback Danny White’s performance. After going 3–6 in the strike-shortened 1982 season, the 49ers fire Bill Walsh deeming the ‘81 season to be a fluke. Owner Ed DeBartolo Jr. decides to reach into the college game for his new coach just as he did with Walsh, and after being rejected by Penn State’s Joe Paterno, Nebraska’s Tom Osbourne, and Florida State’s Bobby Bowden, he eventually settles on Arkansas’ Lou Holtz.
After an unsuccessful first season, Holtz mortgages practically the entire team, to move up in the ‘83 draft for his college linebacker Billy Ray Smith. However, the Niners never get over the loss of Walsh and spend the majority of the decade around .500.
Without the San Francisco dynasty, a power vacuum forms that has to be filled. At first, it appears to be Dan Marino’s Miami Dolphins. They dominate Mike Ditka’s Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XIX and do the same the following year (providing the only two losses for the ‘85 Bears).
However, things start to shift in 1986 after the Cowboys select Mississippi Valley State receiver Jerry Rice with the 17th pick of the draft. White and Rice (a combination that leads to several horrible food puns) bring the Cowboys all the way to the Super Bowl after beating Montana’s Los Angeles Rams in the NFC championship game.
There, they run into John Elway’s Denver Broncos, who take advantage of Dallas’ aging defense and wins Super Bowl XXI. The Cowboys come back to win it the following year, and no definitive dynasty dominates the ‘80s.
But the ‘90s? That’s a different story. After four miserable years, Tampa Bay finally cuts the cord with quarterback Steve Young and trades him to New Orleans in 1989. His replacement? Texas Tech’s Billy Joe Tolliver. Suffice it to say, the pre-Dungy Bucs didn’t exactly know what they were doing.
Back to Young. Unlike the Bucs, the Saints actually have a fairly good team. They don’t need Young to carry the load on his own thanks to a dominant defense, and with White and Montana hitting their late 30s the NFC is theirs for the taking. Behind a league-leading 66 sacks from the defense and a very strong season by Young, the Saints march all the way to the Super Bowl in 1990, where they beat the Buffalo Bills to win their first championship. They go on to win two more in the next four years along with a fourth in Young’s final season (1998) to make the Saints the NFL’s first true dynasty since Chuck Noll’s Pittsburgh Steelers.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what happens to Walsh, he returns to the college game to replace Howard Schnellenberger at the University of Miami.
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