Hall of Famer Steve Young Talks 49ers-Rams, Chargers, Steelers & More w/Rich

Rich opened with the question every Michigan fan wanted answered by a neutral party. Was that one second put back on the clock appropriately? Steve Young didn't hesitate. "Everything that I've seen says that, yeah."

He wanted the air cleared, and added that it's not as if they put time back on for a tush push from the half-yard line. Young conceded the jab anyway. "I still had to do it."

Then it was on to Young's team, and a 49ers win in Australia that doubled as a lesson in travel. He had run into a friend from Melbourne who had just flown back, and she wondered why anyone who has ever taken that flight would try to play a game right after getting off the plane. The Rams, who arrived later, looked "flat as a pancake," as Young put it. The early morning sunshine only added to the strangeness. It looked, from the couch, like a high school game.

Rich noted the counterexample, that the Rams showed up late to London last year and punked a Jaguars team that had been there all week, though he allowed that going east to west may be different. Either way, the Niners had the better day.

What Young saw was the version of San Francisco everyone keeps waiting for. The theme with this team has always been injuries, and the qualifier is always "if healthy." Young thinks it is worth saying plainly what that qualifier hides.

"If healthy, you've got five Hall of Famers on that football team, and if healthy, they could be in the mix with anybody, any time, and that's the fact," he said. "Anyone who sleeps on the Niners is an idiot."

He expects them to be there at the end of the year, in the big games. The catch is the weekly ritual that comes with rooting for them. "Every week as a fan, you're going to have to say, did anyone get hurt? No. Okay, good. We're fine."

Rich mentioned the scare with rookie wide receiver De'Zhaun Stribling, who went down with what looked like an Achilles injury that apparently isn't, and pointed to Mike Evans already showing he can move the ball between the 20s and in the red zone. Young credited Kyle Shanahan, who has proven again and again that he keeps "sharpening his saw." Give Shanahan players with special abilities and Hall of Fame credentials, the way Christian McCaffrey arrived from Carolina, and Young believes he gets the most out of them.

Brock Purdy threw three touchdown passes to three different receivers after an interception he was tapping his chest over. Rich noted it was Purdy's 14th career game with three or more touchdown passes, tying Jeff Garcia for fifth on the franchise list behind Joe Montana's 38 and Young's 36. What Rich really noticed, though, was Purdy using his legs for first downs, which Young has been preaching on the show for years.

"You have to. It's the game today. There's too many free yards," Young said. Matthew Stafford is sophisticated enough as a passer to get away without it. "No one else can."

Young was careful about the sequence. He liked that Purdy first focused on sophisticated pocket passing, because Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson all had to master that too. "You have to master that or you can't get to the Super Bowl." Now, Young said, is the time to expand. "I'm not telling him run more, run less. I'm just saying you have to be able to do that."

Is it sustainable? Young's answer came back to health. Evans has to stay healthy. Trent Williams has to stay healthy. Nick Bosa is coming off surgery. And he was protective of George Kittle, reminding people that the second year back from an Achilles tear is when players finally feel healthy, "and that's when you're in your 20s. So expecting George to be elite right now is like, that's not fair." If the roster gets healthier as the season goes on, Young expects the music pumping out of the boombox as they come out of the tunnel, like 2023.

The flip side was the Rams, the preseason Super Bowl favorite, and whether their flat opener was just jet lag or something opponents can copy. Young's answer was a warning against reading too much into either side.

"The fight in the NFL is for parity. You have to push the rock up the hill constantly and daily to work against parity," he said. The Patriots did it for 20 years, the Chiefs for eight or nine, and he knows how hard it is for teams like the Bills. His rule since the rule changes is simple. "September is the preseason." Just don't come out of it worse than two and two.

He was also honest about the human side. All summer, players read about how great they are before they have played a game. "Sometimes it gets into your head, and then you don't work as hard. You're not as focused. You're not as gritty as you were last year." So Young isn't overreacting to the Rams. He does think the NFC is a bit more wide open than it looked a few weeks ago.

Rich pushed back that all of that talk came from April to July and was only theory. Young agreed and said to let it play out. "What is Myles going to do? He's not going to make no tackles and no sacks for the rest of the year." His advice: "Chill for September, but don't go worse than two and two."

The Patriots, meanwhile, lost AJ Brown to injured reserve for at least a month while Rich and Young were getting connected, and Young had thoughts on Drake Maye's night. He sees a lot of upside, big plays and "a lot of cool things." Then came the last play of the game.

"You're like, no, that can't happen in eighth grade," Young said. With New England set up for a game-tying field goal, Maye got rushed, lost his visibility, moved to his throwing-hand side and popped up a lollipop to end it. "That tells me that there's a place yet in his game where there's a blank space." Young still considers the Maye project "a really cool project." That play just shows there's work to be done.

Rich then ran through the quarterbacks with a new head coach or coordinator: Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts, Jaxson Dart, Josh Allen, Jayden Daniels and Kyler Murray in Minnesota. Young was intrigued by Murray, and shared that he played golf with Kevin O'Connell this summer and asked whether O'Connell could unlock him. O'Connell's answer: "I don't know. I'm going to really work at it."

But Young's pick was Herbert, paired with Mike McDaniel. "I love Mike," Young said. He has been frustrated for years about unlocking Herbert's true ability. "He's always been great, but I mean, to be the best. And I think he can be the best."

If McDaniel and Herbert are given the freedom, Young thinks the two of them "can commune in a way that's going to be otherworldly."

Rich asked why Young is so high on McDaniel, whom he has known since McDaniel was Shanahan's run game coordinator in San Francisco. Young pointed to the coaching tree that has spread across the league from Sean McVay, Kyle Shanahan, Sean Payton and Andy Reid. The foundation gets handed down "freely, in the spirit of Bill Walsh," and the coaches with innovative minds build on it. Young admitted it didn't work out perfectly in Miami. It didn't change his view. "I'd want to go play for Mike McDaniel. I want him to call the plays."

Asked whether Aaron Rodgers and Mike McCarthy belong in that same new-coach category, Young was more guarded. "If they could get into the 2026 version of it all, I think it'd be great. I just don't want to see the 2015 version of it." The game now changes almost month to month, and running the same old plays won't work. You have to watch what the innovators do and copy it. Young said McCarthy "has not proven that that's what he wants to do."

That same lens is why he is looking forward to Chiefs and Broncos on Monday night, with Mahomes back from a knee injury and Andy Reid against Sean Payton. Young admitted he was disappointed by the 49ers and Rams game, because McVay and Shanahan usually "empty the tank on each other," and that didn't happen. He hopes Monday brings the kind of innovation that he believes rules the league now. "The innovators are ruling the league. It's not the conservative guys that are winning it anymore."

Rich closed with a sports talk radio question. Who are the five Hall of Famers? Rich guessed Kittle, Bosa, Fred Warner and Williams, and Young went furthest on Williams.

"He's in the argument for the best football player that ever played," Young said. He compared him to Anthony Munoz, a tackle nobody bothered no matter who he played for. Quarterbacks have proven the modern game lets them play longer, pointing to Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Stafford, but no other position has done that. Williams, Young believes, is such a unique specimen "that he might be able to play at 43, top-level tackle, if he wants to."

Add Evans and McCaffrey, and that's six. Young agreed he should have said six. He called the three on offense, Evans, McCaffrey and Williams, 100% Hall of Famers, called Warner 100%, and said Bosa is close. Williams is first ballot. Warner will be by the time he is done. And Evans could be a first-ballot receiver, "which is one of the toughest things to be."

That is why, if everyone stays healthy with Shanahan doing his thing, Young thinks the 49ers will run through much of the league, with the real tests against Seattle, the Rams again, the Eagles and maybe Green Bay late in the year. "We could probably just jet ahead to January and see where we are," he said, before catching himself. "Look at me. That's after one game."