The Death Of a Dynasty

By Jake Rosenberg

Bleacher Report

05-28-2009

The 1999 National Football League season saw many perennial pretenders become legitimate contenders.

No team embodied that revolutionary season more than the St. Louis Rams.

Five years removed from Los Angeles, the Rams (45-99 combined record from 1990 to 1998) went into the 1999 season battling the lowly Cincinnati Bengals (48-96) to avoid the moniker of ‘worst team of the 90s.’ St. Louis not only made their first Super Bowl in 20 years, they knocked NFC West rival San Francisco from the division’s throne and ended the 49ers’ two-decade long stranglehold.

As a 49ers fan that can remember as far back as Dan Marino screaming at his offensive line to block Dwaine Board in Super Bowl XIX, 1999 was my first true test of team loyalty.

The 49ers missed the playoffs in 1991 despite finishing the year with six consecutive wins and a 10-6 record. I never thought another 49er-less January would come until eight years later when Cardinals cornerback Aeneas Williams blind-sided Steve Young on a late-September Monday night. The NFC West was turned upside-down after that fateful hit and San Francisco began a decade-long plunge that has seen just one playoff win since.

Week 1 of that season would prove to have much foreshadowing for the next four months.

In an effort that resembled Jerry Rice’s 15-week recovery from a knee ligament tear on opening day of 1997, defensive tackle Bryant Young returned for the muddy 1999 opener Jacksonville despite breaking his leg just nine months prior. Young, however, could not spark a struggling defense while Steve Young failed to get the offense into the end zone, losing 41-3.

Coming off of his best statistical season since his early-90s MVP days, the southpaw signal-caller struggled in his first two games of 1999 but still had an opportunity to take San Francisco to 2-1 in Arizona. The fresh season quickly turned when free agent running back Lawrence Phillips whiffed on a blocking assignment which ended Young’s career.

Before exiting, Young tossed touchdown pass No. 86 to Rice to open the scoring while Phillips tried to make amends for his earlier mistake, scampering up the right sideline for a 68-yard touchdown run to win the game.

With a history of concussions shelving Young, Jeff Garcia made his first of what would be 71 career starts with the 49ers. A debut win against eventual AFC Champion Tennessee capped a three-game winning streak, but the 49ers would go on to lose eight straight and 11 of 12 to end the season.

Stanford product Steve Stenstrom would make three unsuccessful starts for San Francisco in relief of Canadian Football League champion and fellow Bill Walsh discovery, Garcia. The CFL Grey Cup MVP would eventually take over again and click with his Bay Area arsenal later in the season but Rice, who was in his penultimate year of 15 in San Francisco, Terrell Owens and J.J. Stokes all had down years with inexperienced quarterbacks taking the snaps.

The lone bright spot on offense that shined all season was running back Charlie Garner. Already known by Niners fans as the Philadelphia Eagle whom prompted the famous Steve Young-George Seifert sideline dispute of 1994, Garner moved west in hopes of earning the starting tailback position vacated by an injured Garrison Hearst. After backing up San Francisco transplant Ricky Watters for three of five seasons in Philadelphia, Garner out-dueled Phillips in training camp. Third-year head coach Steve Mariucci named Garner as starter and the former Tennessee Volunteer never relinquished the job.

Phillips, who was the preseason favorite to take over for Hearst, was let go midway through the season following a dispute with assistant coach and fellow Nebraska Cornhusker Tom Rathman over his lack of playing time. With just 35 career games under his belt, the 49ers would be the talented-yet-troubled back’s third and final stop in the NFL while San Francisco would be a launch pad for the career of Garner.

Garner totaled 1,700-plus yards from scrimmage in each of his two stopgap seasons, a mark that bested Hearst’s 49ers production by 237 yards in just one more start. Hearst miraculously returned to the 49ers backfield in 2001 after overcoming a career-threatening circulatory condition in his ankle while Garner departed with Rice across the bay to Oakland.

The 49ers finished the 1999 season at 4-12 and missed the playoffs for just the third time in an 18-year run that included five Super Bowls.

Now a decade later, I look back at 1999 as the end of the most successful era in any NFL franchise’s history but, for me, it was the year I earned my badge as a true 49ers faithful.