From Montana (and Bono) to Alex Smith, Chiefs enjoyed some San Francisco treats at QB

When Carl Peterson took over as president/general manager of the downtrodden Kansas City Chiefs in 1989, he sought to emulate the NFL franchise of the 1980s.

The San Francisco 49ers.

The 49ers won four Super Bowls during the 1980s, and Peterson knew the secret to their success.

“We kept going after their quarterbacks,” Peterson said with a laugh this week. “And they all came and played well for us.”

The headliner of the group, of course, was Joe Montana, who spent the final two years of his Hall of Fame career with the Chiefs and led them to the AFC Championship Game in 1993, his first season in Kansas City.

Montana has already taken to Twitter in anticipation of the Chiefs meeting the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV on Feb. 2. He posted a photo of framed, side-by-side Chiefs and 49ers jerseys and proclaimed: “You heard from me first, I GUARANTEE, my team will win the SUPER BOWL.”

Montana was one of four former San Francisco quarterbacks to start for the Chiefs during a 13-year period between 1988 and 2000, and all made at least one playoff start.

Steve to Joe

The Chiefs already had a former 49ers quarterback in place in 1989 in Steve DeBerg, whose job Montana took shortly after arriving in San Francisco. DeBerg went 31-20 in his time in Kansas City, and then came the succession under Peterson’s watch: Montana (17-8), Steve Bono (21-10) and Elvis Grbac (26-21).

Alex Smith (50-26) was acquired in 2012 by former general manager John Dorsey and guided the Chiefs to four playoff berths in five seasons, giving the five ex-49er quarterbacks a combined 145-110-1 record in Kansas City.

“You look at everybody, and particularly the successful teams, and try to analyze what they’ve done to get where they are,” Peterson said of rebuilding the Chiefs. “They were running a different offense than we were, the West Coast offense. By our third year, Marty (Schottenheimer) got sold on that, and that’s when he hired Paul Hackett as offensive coordinator.”

Hackett, a former 49ers quarterbacks coach, preceded Montana to Kansas City before Peterson swung the deal to bring him to the Chiefs. Montana was coming off a knee injury and the 49ers were mired in a quarterback dilemma: how to keep both Montana, 36, and Steve Young at the dawn of the salary cap era.

“That’s when I made the call to (49ers general manager) Carmen Policy and asked, ‘Which quarterback do you want to trade me?’” said Peterson, who sent a first-round pick to San Francisco in exchange for Montana and safety David Whitmore.

Joe to Steve

A year later, the Chiefs traded a fourth-round pick to San Francisco for Bono, the understudy to Young, to be the heir apparent to Montana in Kansas City. Though he angered Chiefs fans with his negative remarks about Kansas City restaurants, Bono directed the Chiefs to a 13-3 record and homefield advantage throughout the 1995 postseason only to suffer a heartbreaking 10-7 playoff loss to Indianapolis marked by Lin Elliott’s three missed field-goal attempts.

After the Chiefs lost the final three games of the 1996 season and missed the playoffs with a 9-7 record, Peterson looked toward San Francisco again and signed Young’s backup, Grbac as an unrestricted free agent to replace Bono.

“Bono and Grbac both knew the offense,” Peterson said. “I was always accused of some kind of pipeline between the 49ers and the Chiefs.”

Steve to Elvis

Grbac made his mark in Week 2 of the 1997 season with a last-second touchdown pass to Andre Rison for a 28-27 win at Oakland in a Monday Night Football game. He was 7-3 as a starter before suffering a broken clavicle. Rich Gannon came off the bench and went 5-1 in relief, including a 44-3 victory over Young and the 49ers.

Facing a quarterback controversy, Schottenheimer went back to Grbac for the Chiefs’ season finale and AFC Divisional Round playoff game against Denver, and Grbac came up short in a painful 14-10 loss to the eventual Super Bowl-champion Broncos. Gannon would sign with Oakland as a free agent in 1999 and win league MVP honors in 2002, when he took the Raiders to a Super Bowl. The Chiefs would not so much as reach the postseason again until 2003.

Peterson defended his strategy of acquiring veteran quarterbacks as opposed to drafting one in the first round.

“I always felt that unless you had a Top 10 pick in the draft, the drafting of quarterbacks is really a crapshoot,” he said. “The stats even show that a majority of first-round draft choices fail. I came to the conclusion that if I’m going to waste a first-round draft choice, I’m going to do it on a veteran player who has had playoff experience and playoff success.

“To get a ‘franchise’ quarterback, that’s awfully hard to do. You’ve got to be picking in the Top 10, and he’s got to be pretty special, and we’ve seen some of those, including the young quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, with the Chiefs today.”

Elvis to Alex

Smith struggled mightily as the first overall pick of the 49ers in 2005 before establishing himself under Jim Harbaugh in 2011. But when Smith lost his job to a rising Colin Kaepernick, the Chiefs, in their first year directed by general manager John Dorsey and coach Andy Reid, saw Smith as the ideal quarterback to begin the revival of a broken franchise.

And while Smith led the Chiefs to the playoffs four times in five seasons and became the first Kansas City quarterback to win a postseason game since Montana in 1993, his greatest contribution to the franchise was his mentoring of Mahomes.

The Chiefs traded up from the 27th to the 10th spot in the 2017 draft to select Mahomes, and he served as an understudy to Smith for one year, soaking up the veteran’s approach to film study, game preparation and executing a game plan.

“Being behind Alex and seeing someone who’s seen a ton in his time in the NFL, and then being with this coaching staff for an entire year and getting to go through the practices and do that stuff, has prepared me to get those experiences,” Mahomes said before the 2019 AFC Championship Game.

“…I don’t know if I could’ve done this (otherwise). Having Alex giving me those experiences and teaching me how to be successful was huge for me. Coming out, you don’t know what it takes to be a really good and successful quarterback in the NFL. Being able to have someone in front of me who was one helped me out a ton.”

Niners to Chiefs

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterbacks have posted a 145-110 record for the Chiefs:

Quarterback, years, W-L-T (pct.)

Steve DeBerg, 1987-91, 31-20-1 (.606)

Joe Montana, 1993-94, 17-8-0 (.680)

Steve Bono, 1994-96, 21-10-0 (.677 )

Elvis Grbac, 1997-2000, 26-21-0 (.553)

Alex Smith, 2013-17, 50-26 (.658)

This story was originally published January 23, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "From Montana (and Bono) to Alex Smith, Chiefs enjoyed some San Francisco treats at QB."